Notes on Dante's Divine Comedy

Barry Neavill made these comments to the ML mailing list on 6/22/12:

"The ML used the Carlyle-Okey-Wicksteed translation, which was originally published in Dent's Temple Classics around 1900. However, the ML mistakenly called it the Carlyle-Wicksteed translation, dropping Oley's name (he translated Purgatorio). The Illustrated ML edition also omitted Okey's name. A Random House memo dated September 1950 asked that Okey's name be added to the title page, but the correction was made in the MLCE title-page only. It wasn't until the mid-1960s that Okey was finally credited on the regular ML title page -- five or six years before the regular ML edition was discontinued."

He added this on 1/26/14:

"[A] new 625-page typesetting of Dante's Divine Comedy, with genealogical tables added at the end and line drawings of Dante on the part-titles for Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradisio, and the genealogical tables, was used initially for the 1944 Illustrated Modern Library printing. The new plates were first used for printings in the regular ML in spring 1945."


First copyright page text:     First Modern Library Edition

First binding style:     7

First inverse DJ number:     210

Dates in print:     1932 - 1951 (no bibliography)
                              1951 - 1970 (Wilkins bibliography added)

Toledano numbers:   208.1 (no bibliography)
                                    208.2 (Wilkins bibliography)


GT42

Confirmed buckram sighting?      yes


Intro author:    C.H. Grandgent

Genre:     Poetry

Curriculum:     Medieval World

Original language: Italian

Translator:      Thomas Okey, John Aitken Carlyle, & Philip H. Wicksteed


Thanks to:

Henry Toledano Darrell Johnson Barry Neavill

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