This is the story of how Homer, the ancient poet of the Odyssey and the Iliad – songs of war and exile - still inspires us today.

In Europe, history begins with Homer – an ancient, dead poet who might not even have existed; no other verse has ignited the imagination of so many writers and thinkers across so many millennia. This book will tell the story of how Homer, the most influential writer to have ever lived, came to haunt British culture (despite speaking no English).

Homer’s songs were probably first sung on the eastern edge of the Aegean – in what is now western Turkey – in the 8th century BC, but their influence has since spread across the entire world. Henry Power stalks the steps of twelve thinkers who have turned to Homer to find answers about their own voices and times. These include many of the most significant figures in the history of poetry in English: Alexander Pope, John Keats, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Ezra Pound, and Derek Walcott. Over the centuries these writers have reinvented Homer as a lofty ‘Prince of Poets’, as a wild prophet, as an angry pacifist, as a Celtic bard, and as a Caribbean fisherman. This book tells the story of these transformations, offering an unexpected new history of English literature and culture. It also asks: why Homer? What is it about these ancient poems that has spurred so much creativity and passion?

Even though they are so central to British culture (in the nineteenth-century, for instance, it was expected that the political leaders of the empire would know their Homer by heart), the world of the Homeric poems is a deeply alien one—violent, superstitious, and far earthier than many of the later cultures that adopted it. This book will show how their weird and unsettling aspects have found their way into the bloodstream of English-speaking nations, as successive writers have tried to capture the strange, lost music of the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Henry has long been as haunted by Homer as his subjects – he’s been reading the epics almost as long as he’s been reading, driven by an abiding fascination with how these ancient texts helped to shape our world and, in turn, been reshaped and reimagined by writers throughout the ages. Today, Homer’s stories and heroes are known to millions of people who have never read them. This book will give a sense of the Iliad and the Odyssey—of their plot, their characters, their tone, and their poetry. It will provide a jumping-off point for those who want to know more about Homer, explaining where the poems came from and how they have reached us.

Details

ISBN13: 9781399428156
Format: Hardback
Number of Pages: 352
Edition:
Publication Date: 03 Nov 2026
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Publication City, Country: London, United Kingdom
Dimensions (cm): 23.8(H)x16(L)x3.6(W)560
Weight (gm): 560

Author Biography

Henry Power is Professor of English Literature at the University of Exeter. He has been awarded a research fellowship by the Leverhulme Trust to allow him to work on this book. As well as publishing academic books, he is a regular contributor to publications such as the TLS, Evening Standard and Literary Review. He has appeared as a guest on In Our Time on BBC Radio 4. He has a significant international profile as an academic, and has held visiting posts at All Souls College, Oxford; Yale University; the Huntington Library, California, and Peking University, Beijing.

Reviews

This rich embroidery of the British poetic story, from Chapman's Homer to contemporary writers, is a wonder of imaginative scholarship. The reader feels as excited as Keats, 'silent upon a peak of Darien'. We learn much about the British cultural tradition, but also about the immortal genius of Homer himself. Every page is an illuminating joy. -- A. N. Wilson
This is such a brilliantly told story of Homer-obsessives through the ages that, by the end, you're as hooked on Homer as they were. -- Frank Skinner
It's rich and beautiful and strange. -- Rory Stewart, The Rest Is Politics
I am bowled over by this book, by its range and erudition, its enormous capacity for empathy with a stadium-full of different minds and times and individualities. It is a triumph of understanding and wit, the very best of what criticism and biography and sheer reading can do. It is also written with a deeply receptive frame of mind, constantly championing the neglected and disparaged. To read it is to be enriched. -- Adam Nicolson
Full of wit, wisdom and wonder, in this beautifully illustrated book Henry Power brings Homer's stories, their cultural impact and continuing relevance to our society, vividly to life. -- Lachlan Goudie
Homer-Haunted is an endlessly generous book, written with a wonderful lightness of touch. Pope, Keats, Thom Gunn, returning World War II soldiers, Alice Oswald and many more meet in its pages through encounters with Homer that open up worlds of poetry and history as they unfold. The result is a joy for all those that love Homer, and a revelation for all those new to these glorious poems. -- Daisy Hay
engaging, at times funny, occasionally moving and always readable…as Power shows, Homer appeals to the spirit of every age… Power is an entertaining companion… Homer-Haunted shows brilliantly why Homer has lasted for 3,000 years and why The Iliad and The Odyssey will last for 3,000 years more. -- The Times
absorbing... Like The Iliad and Odyssey, Homer-Haunted is a treasure chest of a book. -- Literary Review