The Inferno of Dante Alighieri (1903 edition)

What it is

This is a 1903 English edition of the Inferno, the first part of Dante's Divine Comedy, part of the Temple Classics series. It includes maps, plans and genealogical tables to help readers follow the poem's geography and characters.

Why it matters

Though Dante wrote the original poem in the early 1300s, this edition is a later scholarly tool meant to make his difficult, richly detailed poem accessible to English readers. It shows the lasting effort by scholars to explain Dante's world centuries later.

Look closer

• Why might editors add maps and family trees to a medieval poem?
• What does the need for so much explanation suggest about how Dante expected his readers to already understand the world around him?
• How might a translation change the experience of reading Dante's original Italian?