Skip to Main Content

The Bruce Rogers Collection

Collection of books designed by the 20th century typographer and designer, Bruce Rogers

The Odyssey of Homer

This is the first edition of the T.E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia") translation of Homer's The Odyssey.  Rogers suggested to Lawrence that he translate the poem, and the two worked together on the production of the book for four years. A grey shaded paper was made by hand, with a Greek galley used as the watermark. Even a special ink, made with balsam, was used and gave the volumes a distinct, spicy fragrance.  Rogers used his signature typeface, Centaur, for the printing, and used 26 small classic roundels in black, set on gold leaf, for the illustrations, which were drawn by Rogers from designs on ancient Greek vases.  Our copy is inscribed to Dr. Marvin "For H.M. Marvin, Bruce Rogers, Jan. 1, 1947."

The Odyssey

Questions? Need help? Ask Us
Davidson College Library, Box 7200, 209 Ridge Rd., Davidson, NC 28035-7200
Creative Commons license logo for CC by-sa 4.0
This Davidson College Library Research Guides are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
All box-title icons from Entypo pictograms by Daniel Bruce — www.entypo.com