John Dryden's last, and one of his finest, literary achievements was a collection of new translations of classical and medieval poetry, published together with some of his own original poems and a preface considered to be one of his most important critical essays. This volume, entitled Fables, Ancient and Modern, was published in 1700 to the acclaim of Dryden's English contemporaries. Dryden had already translated classical poetry by authors like Ovid and Juvenal in the 1680s, and he turned to translating again in the early 1690s to provide himself with a source of income as his dramatic success declined. Literary translation from the Greek and Latin poets was a conventional exercise, but Dryden's genius for poetry enabled him to

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Published 21 February 2003

Citation: Trammell, Jena. "Fables Ancient and Modern". The Literary Encyclopedia. 21 February 2003.
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