Further Reading on Sappho
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Writing about Sappho begins with the ancient reports of her life and runs through four centuries of translators, biographers and critics. The works listed here are modern: studies written to describe her life, her poems, and the way later readers have understood them. The ancient sources themselves, from Herodotus to the Byzantine Suda, are treated under the ancient lives of Sappho.
The list is arranged by kind and date. It starts with a freely available study of 1924, then covers earlier European scholarship and the English-language scholarship of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and ends with translations that carry notes and supporting material.
A Freely Available Study
Robinson was a professor of archaeology and epigraphy at Johns Hopkins University. He wrote the book for the series Our Debt to Greece and Rome. Its chapters treat Sappho’s life, Lesbos, her circle of pupils and the legendary tradition about her appearance, the story of Phaon and her character. They go on to her writings, her representation in ancient and later art, her influence on Greek and Roman literature, and her reception from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance through Italy, Spain, Germany and France. The last chapters treat her influence on music and give a conclusion, and the book ends with notes and a bibliography. It prints translations of the fragments by several hands, among them the author’s own, and carries twenty-four plates, among them Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s painting Sappho, now in the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. The book is available as Project Gutenberg eBook #61505.
Earlier European Scholarship and Biography
French translations of the poems of Anacreon and Sappho, with an account of Sappho’s life.
The title translates as “Sappho freed from a prevailing prejudice.” The work defends her reputation against the stories told about her.
A study of Sappho and the poet Simonides by the German classical scholar Wilamowitz-Moellendorff.
A biography of Sappho set in the world of her own time.
A commentary on the poems of Sappho and of her contemporary Alcaeus. Page was co-editor of the 1955 Greek text of both poets, the Lobel–Page edition.
Scholarship from 1989 to 2021
A study of how French writers reimagined Sappho over four centuries.
A study of Sappho among the women writers of ancient Greece and Rome.
A study of Sappho’s life, her world and her poems.
Essays that read Sappho through modern critical theory.
Two volumes of essays by modern scholars. One treats the poems and the other their reception.
A study of desire between women in the poems.
A study of how Victorian poets and scholars read and remade Sappho.
A study of how Sappho’s image was shaped in antiquity.
Essays on the poem on old age, which a papyrus in Cologne published in 2004 and 2005 completed.
A short introduction to Sappho and her readers.
Essays on the papyri published in 2014, which contain the Brothers Poem and the Kypris Poem. The volume is available online without charge.
Biographies and Studies
Reading Sappho: Contemporary Approaches (1996)
- For: Scholars
- Form: Edited collection of critical essays
Eros the Bittersweet (1986)
- For: General readers
- Form: Essay on eros in ancient Greek literature
Sappho Is Burning (1995)
- For: Scholars
- Form: Critical study
The Woman and the Lyre: Women Writers in Classical Greece and Rome (1989)
- For: Students
- Form: Survey of women poets
Sappho in Later Literature
Victorian Sappho (1999)
- For: Scholars
- Form: Study of literary reception
Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves (1975)
- For: Students
- Form: Social history of women in antiquity
Fictions of Sappho, 1546–1937 (1989)
- For: Scholars
- Form: Study of literary reception