The volume is meant to be the first systematic account of epic reception on the modern stage and with its range of topics, both historically and geographically, and contributors from various disciplines it certainly meets this expectation. Additionally, it sets a milestone for future research on the reception of antiquity on the whole. An extensive bibliography, an index and a number of black-and-white illustrations (most of them showing actual epic performances on stage) round up the impressive amount of interesting contributions.
Fiona Macintosh is Professor of Classical Reception, Director of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama (APGRD), and Fellow of St Hilda's College at the University of Oxford. She is the author of Dying Acts: Death in Ancient Greek and Modern Irish Tragic Drama (Cork University Press, 1994), Greek Tragedy and the British Theatre, 1660-1914 (with Edith Hall; OUP, 2005), and Sophocles: Oedipus Tyrannus (CUP, 2009), and has also edited numerous APGRD volumes, including most recently The Ancient Dancer in the Modern World: Responses to Greek and Roman Dance (OUP, 2010) and The Oxford Handbook of Greek Drama in the Americas (with Kathryn Bosher, Justine McConnell, and Patrice Rankine; OUP, 2015).
Justine McConnell is Lecturer in Comparative Literature at King's College London. She is the author of Black Odysseys: The Homeric Odyssey in the African Diaspora since 1939 (OUP, 2013), and co-editor of three volumes: Ancient Slavery and Abolition: From Hobbes to Hollywood (with Edith Hall and Richard Alson; OUP, 2011), The Oxford Handbook of Greek Drama in the Americas (with Kathryn Bosher, Fiona Macintosh, and Patrice Rankine; OUP, 2015), and Ancient Greek Myth in World Fiction since 1989 (with Edith Hall; Bloomsbury, 2016).
Stephen Harrison is Professor of Latin Literature at the University of Oxford, Fellow and Tutor in Classics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and Adjunct Professor at the universities of Copenhagen and Trondheim. He has published extensively on Latin literature and its reception, including the following volumes: A Commentary on Vergil, Aeneid 10 (OUP, 1991), Generic Enrichment in Vergil and Horace (OUP, 2007), Living Classics: Greece and Rome in Contemporary Poetry in English (edited volume; OUP, 2009), Louis MacNeice: The Classical Radio Plays (co-edited with Amanda Wrigley; OUP, 2013), and Classics in the Modern World: A Democratic Turn? (co-edited with Lorna Hardwick; OUP, 2013).
Dr Claire Kenward is Archivist and Researcher at the University of Oxford's Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama (APGRD). She has published on the reception of Greek drama and epic in early modern England, though her current research and forthcoming publications focus on the reception of Homer's Iliad in science fiction and speculative fantasy; she is also the co-author and curator of the APGRD's two multimedia, interactive eBooks: Medea - A Performance History (2016) and Agamemnon - A Performance History (2018).