This book, written by a team of experts from many countries, provides a comprehensive account of the ways in which translation has brought the major literature of the world into English-speaking culture. Part I discusses theoretical issues and gives an overview of the history of translation into English. Part II, the bulk of the work, arranged by language of origin, offers critical discussions, with bibliographies, of the translation history of specific texts (e.g. the Koran, the Kalevala), authors (e.g. Lucretius, Dostoevsky), genres (e.g. Chinese poetry, twentieth-century Italian prose) and national literatures (e.g. Hungarian, Afrikaans).

The Origin of German Tragic Drama is Walter Benjamin's most sustained and original work. It begins with a general theoretical introduction on the nature of the baroque art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, concentrating on the peculiar stage-form of royal martyr dramas called Trauerspiel. Benjamin also comments on the engravings of Durer and the theatre of Calderon and Shakespeare. Baroque tragedy, he argues, was distinguished from classical tragedy by its shift from myth into history. Georg Lukacs, an opponent of Benjamin's aesthetics, singled out The Origin of German Tragic Drama as one of the main sources of literary modernism in the twentieth century.

Translating Classical Plays is a selection of edited papers by J. Michael Walton published and delivered between 1997 and 2014. Of the four sections, each with a new introduction, the first two cover the history of translating classical drama into English and specific issues relating to translation for stage performance. The latter two are concerned with the three Greek tragedians, and the Greek and Roman writers of old and new comedy, ending with the hitherto unpublished text of a Platform Lecture given at the National Theatre in London comparing the plays of Plautus with Sondheim’s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. The volume is an invaluable resource for anyone involved in staging or translating classical drama.

Each number includes the section "Reviews."