Physical description

Juvenal
Author: Edward Walford, M.A.
Editor:Rev. W. Lucas Collins
Publisher: William Blackwood & Sons
Date: 1872

Publication type

non-fiction

Inscriptions & markings

The label on the spine cover with typed text PAT 877 JUV
Paste down front end paper has a sticker from Warrnambool Mechanics Institute and Free Library.
Front loose end paper has a sticker from Corangamite Regional Library Service.
Flyleaf has a stamp from Warrnambool Mechanics Institute and Free Library.

Summary

The subject book is a specific volume from a highly popular Victorian series called "Ancient Classics for English Readers." While Rev. W. Lucas Collins was the overarching editor of the entire 28-volume series (which explains why his name is prominently attached to it), the specific volume on Juvenal published in 1872 was actually written by a scholar named Edward Walford, M.A.
The book is an introduction to Juvenal (Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis), a famous Roman poet active in the late 1st and early 2nd centuries AD. Juvenal is renowned for his Satires, which fiercely attacked the corruption, decadence, vice, and hypocrisy of Roman society under the Empire. In line with the rest of the series, this volume provides a translated, summarized, and curated overview of Juvenal's work. Because Juvenal's raw, unedited Latin can be incredibly explicit and vulgar, the Victorian authors heavily sanitized ("bowdlerized") the text, smoothing over the more scandalous elements to make his brilliant satire safe for a general English audience.