The First Book of Virgil’s Aeneid [Henry Sargent]

In 1806, Henry Sargent, a student at Fort William College in Calcutta, translated the first four books of Virgil’s epic Aeneid from Latin into Bengali. Four years later, the translation of the first book was published by the Mission Press at Serampur. The book then disappeared from circulation, though stray references to it were found in contemporary accounts and catalogues. In 2010, a copy of the book was found in the library of Regent’s Park College, Oxford. Jadavpur University Press is proud to reprint the work, over two centuries after its first publication. This edition contains a facsimile version of the book along with a detailed critical apparatus, which includes a trilingual rendition of the text. We believe that this edition will restore to Henry Sargent his rightful position as one of the pioneers of Bengali prose.