Audiobook · read by volunteers
Iliad for Boys and Girls
Alfred John Church (1829–1912)
Read by Lizzie Driver · 25 chapters · 4 h 22
About the book
The Trojan War, ten years of siege, anger and heroism, is one of the great stories of the world. In this retelling, Alfred J. Church sets it out for younger readers, following Homer's Iliad from the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles to the fighting on the plains before Troy. We meet the swift-footed Achilles, brave Hector, wise old Nestor and cunning Odysseus, and we watch the gods take sides in the struggles of mortals. Church keeps the storytelling clear and direct, while preserving the grandeur and the emotion of the original. Without talking down to his audience, he makes one of the oldest poems in European literature approachable for a first encounter. It is an adventure, a tragedy and a window on the ancient world.
Introduction
Alfred John Church (1829-1912) was an English classical scholar and a prolific writer who devoted much of his career to retelling the stories of ancient Greece and Rome for young readers. His versions of Homer, Virgil, Herodotus and others were widely read in schools and homes in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods, and they helped many people to meet the classics before they met them in the original.
The Iliad for Boys and Girls was published in 1907. It is a prose retelling of Homer's epic, which was composed in Greek around the eighth century BC and which tells of a few weeks in the tenth year of the siege of Troy. Church does not try to reproduce the poet's verse. He aims instead at clarity and momentum, keeping the main events and the major characters, and conveying the code of honour, the grief and the pity that give the poem its depth.
For a modern listener, a retelling like this has several uses. It can serve as a first introduction before turning to a verse translation, or as a refresher on the shape of the story, or simply as a gripping account of heroes in battle. The recording has twenty-five chapters and lasts about four and a half hours, read by a LibriVox volunteer. The plain style makes the story easy to follow by ear, even for listeners who know none of the names beforehand. It will suit families, students and anyone who has always meant to get to know the Iliad.
Public domain
Alfred John Church died in 1912: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text