Introduction

Abstract

Only a relatively small number of contemporary readers are familiar with the work of C. H. Sisson (1914–2003) and he is in danger of being remembered chiefly as a notable translator of classical and European verse. This book is intended in part as an intervention on behalf of Sisson as a poet in his own right. Above all, we have been motivated to undertake this project, and see it through to completion, by the quality of Sisson’s work, in prose as well as poetry: Sisson was a fine (and often very funny, if rather unsparing) writer of prose, and he was, we believe, a very significant poet—more so, in fact, in his ‘original’ poetry than in the large quantity of mostly commissioned translations for which he is generally known (if at all) today.