SOURCE: Davis, Richard Beale. “America in George Sandys's ‘Ovid.’” William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, 4 (July 1947): 297-304.

In the following essay, Davis asserts that Sandys's experiences of the life and landscape of North America strongly influenced his translation of Ovid.

I.

The translation of the fifteen books of Ovid's Metamorphoses by George Sandys has been called “the first utterance of the conscious literary spirit articulated in America.”¹ The circumstances of its production provides the basis for this assertion. Sandys, treasurer and director of industry at Jamestown from 1621 until late in 1625,² probably brought his translation of five books of the Metamorphoses with him to Virginia and translated the remaining ten during his hours of recreation on the voyage and in the colony.³ At any rate, in 1626, a few months after his return to England, the first edition⁴ appeared.

Though America has been proud to claim a share in this...