William Adlington, Cupid and Psyche, 1903
Facets of Apuleius’ Golden Ass in the Brotherton Collection at Leeds
Apuleius, Opera, 1588
Philander, The Golden Calf, 1749
Voltaire, La Pucelle d'Orleans, 1762
William Adlington, Cupid and Psyche, 1903
Harold Edgeworth Butler, Cupid and Psyche, 1922
Boccaccio, 1511
Minturno, 1559
Thomas Shadwell, Psyche, 1675
Thomas Shadwell, Psyche, 1675 (2)
Jean de la Fontaine, Les Amours de Psyché et de Cupidon, 1814
Joseph Beaumont, Psyche, or love's mystery, 1702
Thomas D'Urfey, A new song in honour of the glorious assembly at Court on the Queens birthday
Mary Tighe, Psyche or The legend of love, 1812
Christoph Wieland, Fragments of Psyche, 1767
William Morris, The earthly paradise, 1868-70
A note by William Morris on his aims in founding the Kelmscott Press, 1898
William Morris collected by Alf Mattison
Robert Bridges, Eros and Psyche, 1885
Victor de Laprade, Psyché, 1857
Edward Carpenter, The story of Eros and Psyche, 1900
Walter Pater, Marius the Epicurean, 1885
Georges Jean-Aubry and Manuel de Falla, Psyché : poème, 1927
Pierre Louÿs, Psyché, 1927
The 1566 English translation by William Adlington, used by Shakespeare, has been the most influential translation of the novel as a whole throughout the English-speaking world. After centuries of use, it is still in print today. This scholarly edition by Rev. R.J. Hughes, M.A., who “corrected the texts and added the Notes” (p. 100), uses it, too. His notes are keyed to the Latin, and are on grammar as well as content.
This is a bibliophile edition, targeted at the gentleman scholar: bilingual, Latin and English. It has markers in the Latin text (based on Valpy’s edition) to help find the corresponding line in Adlington’s translation. Hughes’ editorial note (p. 108-11) derives its information heavily from Apuleius’ own Apologia, Adlington’s preface to his original translation, and commentaries by Valpy and Beroaldo. Like Adlington, Hughes, too, seems to confuse Apuleius with Lucius (p. 108: “Apuleius acquired his knowledge of the Latin tongue by assiduous efforts; and is said to have learnt the language without the aid of a master. This fact, if true, together with the fact that he possessed in a marked degree the gift of originality, would account for the difference between his style of writing and that of the prominent writers of the age in which he lived.”). The first sentence is an echo of the prologue to Apuleius’ novel.
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