Collector’s tips. The deluxe paperback has French flaps and deckled page edges. 

Mendelsohn’s expansive six-beat lines aim to preserve the amplitude, syntax, sound patterning and line-by-line density of the Greek – so it feels a little archaic, but is closer to the original experience. 

Collector’s tips. The University of Chicago cloth edition is the principal US first edition from 2025; a Chicago paperback followed in 2026; and Penguin issued a UK paperback in April 2026. Be careful not to confuse this one with Mendelsohn’s memoir An Odyssey.

Wilson was the first woman to publish a complete English translation of the poem, and her 2017 version immediately changed the conversation around Homer. The regular iambic-pentameter lines keep the pace of the story brisk, and it’s interesting to see social categories that older translators softened (for example, slavery) kept more visible. 

Collector’s tips. This is more of a serious reading copy rather than a collectible, but the hardback is considered a key modern first edition. It includes maps, notes and a glossary. The paperback has French flaps and deckled page edges.

Fitzgerald’s 1961 translation was the literary standard for a generation, and Everyman’s 1992 edition gives it a durable small-library treatment.

Collector’s tips. Sewn binding, ribbon marker, interesting Seamus Heaney introduction, and twenty-five line drawings by Barnaby Fitzgerald.

This pocket clothbound edition is sized to be a travel companion, with gilt edges, a ribbon marker and a bright design that nods to archaic Mediterranean art.

Collector’s tips. The type is pretty small, in case that’s an issue for you.

Contains E. V. Rieu’s prose translation in a revision by his son D. C. H. Rieu, with an introduction by Peter Jones. The wave patterned cover makes this one recognisably part of the clothbound classics series.

Collector’s tips. These are very pretty volumes on the shelf, but the foiled covers can be delicate and the binding is glued.

Wilson’s brisk iambic-pentameter translation is paired with Hicks-Jenkins’s bold, theatrical images: eight coloured maps and eight integrated double-page illustrations. The book is full-bound in printed and blocked cloth, gilded on three edges in gunmetal foil, printed in two colours, and housed in a blocked slipcase.

Collector’s tips. The style feels contemporary, and there’s a matching Wilson/Hicks-Jenkins Iliad as well. It’s based on the 2025 limited edition.

This substantial omnibus combines ornate gold cover embossing with a full-colour fore-edge design, giving budget-conscious collectors a single display volume for both Homeric epics. The format is larger and more imposing than Arcturus’s slimmer decorative classics.

Collector’s tips. A pretty showpiece, but neither of the translations are the easiest starting places if you haven’t read it before.

Laci Fowler’s painted scene wraps the boards as part of this series design. This edition uses Samuel Butler’s public-domain Victorian-era prose. 

Collector’s tips. Wrap-around cover design, decorative gold foiled page edges, internal pull-quotes, and a ribbon marker.

This edition uses Samuel Butler’s public-domain Victorian prose, but includes numerous classic artworks to illustrate the text. 

Collector’s tips. Foil accents on the cover, decorative sprayed page edges and a ribbon bookmark.

A pretty leather binding with decorative endpapers.

Collector’s tips. As an omnibus it’s a bit of a reading trade-off with quite tight text.

Nice to see a book box releasing a prettily designed classic! This edition uses T. E. Lawrence’s idiosyncratic prose translation, published under his later name T. E. Shaw. 

Collector’s tips. A foiled jacketless case, digitally sprayed edges, foiled illustrated endpapers, an imitation quarter-bound spine and a printed ribbon marker. 

A limited edition two-volume set of The Odyssey and The Iliad. Contains eight coloured maps and eight integrated double-page illustrations. The book is quarter-bound in goatskin leather with illustrated cloth sides, gilded on the top edge, printed in two colours, and housed in a clamshell box, lined and foil blocked with four designs.

Collector’s tips. Limited to 500 copies, the set sold out around 8 hours after it was released despite a release price of £750 in the UK and $1,000 USD.

An oversized edition with polished heroic couplets supplied by Pope’s translation; coupled with neoclassical outline designs by Flaxman that shaped nineteenth-century visual Homer. 

Collector’s tips. Embossed cover, detailed decorative page edges, and a commentary by Emma Woolerton that helps first-time readers follow the story.

Chiltern’s textured decorative boards, gilt details and Victorian pocket-book size give this edition a distinctive cabinet-of-curiosities charm. 

Collector’s tips. The highly embossed cover and gilded page edges give this one a very pretty look, but the pages are glossy so it’s not great for annotation if that’s your thing.

Compact, durable, and part of a uniform series of classics. 

Collector’s tips. Unlike many affordable editions, this one has Rieu’s readable prose translation rather than Butler. The interior is plain.

A well-dressed reading copy of the Butler translation.

Collector’s tips. Gold foiled page edges.

Easton Press turns the 1929 Palmer/Wyeth edition into a leather-bound showpiece: gilt decorated cover, hubbed spine, gilded page edges, moiré endpapers, ribbon marker and a decorative slipcase. 

Collector’s tips. This is a beautiful edition, but priced accordingly. There are plenty of non-deluxe Easton Press editions so check carefully if you’re buying online.

One of the B&N collectible classics line, this one has both epics, an antiquity-inspired cover, and gilt decoration.

Collector’s tips. The pages are quite thin, but it’s readable.

Wyeth’s 1929 pictures are among the great American visions of Homer: saturated colour, muscular figures and dangerous seas. Calla’s edition reproduces all sixteen colour plates with Bryant’s nineteenth-century verse translation, making the imagery accessible without the cost or fragility of an original Scribner issue.

Collector’s tips. I don’t love this translation, but the book is a fantastic celebration of the artwork.

Accompanies Fagles’s energetic free verse with Bernard Knox’s scholarship, map endpapers, a frontispiece and eight dreamy colour illustrations by Grahame Baker-Smith. 

Collector’s tips. Earlier printings of this edition are quarter-bound in leather with a blue stained top page edge, later more brightly coloured bindings use buckram and are missing the stained top edge. There are other Folio Society editions as well – a 1948 hardback translated by F. L.  Lucas, and a two-volume set with the Iliad published in 1975 translated by E. V. Rieu.

Despite the boring binding for this one, Moser’s black-and-white wood engravings give the prose high contrast, hard edges and psychological tension.

Collector’s tips. Limited edition of 2000 copies. This is a weird one for George Macy’s Press. There are two LEC editions – this one, and an earlier version published in 1930, and although isually you can get a cheaper Heritage Press edition for most LEC titles, the Heritage Press Odyssey edition is completely different.

Reshapes the poem for younger readers and families.

Collector’s tips. A compact gift hardback, good for reading aloud.

Hinds’s graphic Odyssey (originally published in 2010) has long been one of the best visual introductions to the poem, and the 2026 deluxe edition gives it the collector treatment with gold foil and painted edges. His sequential storytelling is particularly good at clarifying the nested chronology of the epic tale.

Collector’s tips. Despite being a graphic novel, this is a substantial adaptation.

Powell is a distinguished Homer scholar and translator, but this particular book is an illustrated retelling rather than his complete verse translation so it has been condensed.

Collector’s tips. A good option if you’re interested in the narrative context before/rather than tackling the poem. Illustrated throughout with 50 wood-cut style illustrations.

Sutcliff’s storytelling has the grave momentum of oral legend, and Alan Lee’s atmospheric pictures give the voyage melancholy. Readers who know Lee’s artwork through Tolkien will surely recognise the luminous style of landscape.

Collector’s tips. The text first appeared as The Wanderings of Odysseus, and this 2014 reissue retainins the same classic retelling and artwork but I think is a prettier format.

A highlight reel pop-up adaptation, which compresses the epic into a real kinetic spectacle! Each spread is a gate fold with multiple pop-ups and pull tabs, including a Trojan Horse, rowing oars,  Polyphemus in peril, and a bow strung with real cord.

Collector’s tips. Unfortunately it’s out of print and relatively expensive.

Stephen Fry has a whole sequence of three Greek Myth retellings with The Odyssey being the third volume. It’s a chatty, well-informed version that keeps the adventure moving while pausing for names, variants, jokes and mythological connections. It’s not a translation of Homer’s lines; it’s more like a modern storyteller leading you through Odyssey’s journey.

Collector’s tips. The US and UK editions of this work feel quite different – the US edition devotes substantial space to classical artwork, which makes it feel like more of a display book. The UK book is just text.

Atwood’s short, sharp counter-narrative retells Odysseus’s homecoming from the point of view of Penelope and the twelve hanged maids.

Collector’s tips. First published in 2005 as part of the Canongate Myth series, the 20th anniversary edition linked below includes a new foreword from the author and an afterword from Philip Pullman.

Miller expands the enchantress’s brief appearance in Homer into a persuasive life of exile, craft, power and self-possession. It provides a vivid before-and-after for one of The Odyssey’s most memorable women.

Collector’s tips. The UK clothbound anniversary hardback linked below is drenched in gilt (very pretty), and includes a new foreword by the author. But sadly, it is gluebound, and the paper covers can be a bit fragile on the corners.

While Odysseus is absent, Penelope governs a vulnerable island beneath the gaze of rival kings and an impatient household. This series turns her waiting years into a political drama.

Collector’s tips. In the Songs of Penelope series with House of Odysseus and The Last Song of Penelope.

Barbieri reimagines Homeric episodes through a richly illustrated 78-card oracle, with Harrington’s companion interpretations. 

Collector’s tips.This is a crossover object for mythology collectors, fantasy-art admirers and deck collectors.