Originally published in 1955, this introductory text was created for the general reader or students of the classics seeking a greater understanding of Ovid.

Ovid was, despite his faults, what Macaulay called him, 'a good fellow'. But he was also a wit, the product of an age of refinement. More important, he was an artist with conscious mastery of a great range of literary artifice; his poetry has a studied movement, a grace, a rich and patterned surface, a music, that have appealed to readers and writers with an ear for ' technique' ever since. In this 1962 volume, Mr Wilkinson writes to communicate his own evident enjoyment and understanding of Ovid's fortunes. A life tells what is known of the poet, and serves as a framework to the account of the poetry. This book, an abridgement of Ovid Recalled, is designed particularly for those who have no Latin: no special knowledge is assumed, and the ample quotation is translated into heroic couplets. The result is a delightful and serviceable introduction to Ovid.

Comprising fifteen books and over two hundred and fifty myths, Ovid's Metamorphoses is one of the longest extant Latin poems from the ancient world and one of the most influential works in Western culture. It is an epic on desire and transgression that became a gateway to the entire world of pagan mythology and visual imagination. This, the first complete commentary in English, covers all aspects of the text – from textual interpretation to poetics, imagination, and ideology – and will be useful as a teaching aid and an orientation for those who are interested in the text and its reception. Historically, the poem's audience includes readers interested in opera and ballet, psychology and sexuality, myth and painting, feminism and posthumanism, vegetarianism and metempsychosis (to name just a few outside the area of Classical Studies).