Thomas Percy’s Translation of Ovid’s Epistles: Introduction and Text

By the time he published the Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, for which he is chiefly known today, in 1765, Thomas Percy had a record of diverse literary and linguistic interests, in many cases in the role of a translator. Inasmuch as they lack connections with the Reliques these tend to be downplayed or overlooked. One of his numerous unpublished projects, belonging to 1758, was a translation of Ovid’s Epistles in a verse form he thought of as an English equivalent for Latin elegiac couplets. First discussing some of the implications for our understanding of Percy’s place in literary history, this contribution presents a text of the five epistles Percy completed (Ovid’s Epistles 1–5) as they appear, uniquely, in autograph in Bodleian MS Percy e. 6.