This is a classic one-volume edition of all the writings of Plato generally considered to be authentic. The editors, Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, chose the contents from the work of the best modern British and American translators. The volume contains prefatory notes to each dialogue, by Hamilton; an introductory essay on Plato’s philosophy and writings, by Cairns; and a comprehensive index with cross references to assist the reader with the philosophical vocabulary of the different translators.
Edith Hamilton (1867–1963) was perhaps the most famous and influential classicist of the twentieth century. Her bestselling Mythology remains a standard version of the stories of the ancient world. Huntington Cairns (1904–1985) was a writer and lawyer who worked at different times for the U.S. Treasury, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and Johns Hopkins University.
"This elegant edition contains many of the best and most readable English translations of the Dialogues and Letters. . . . Judiciously edited, beautifully printed."—Review of Metaphysics
“Superlative. . . . [The book’s] translations remain for me the Platonic Forms of the Platonic dialogues. They are the voice of Socrates and his interlocutors that I hear when I think about the questions which Plato so vividly dramatized for us two millennia ago. They are voices and questions which continue to resonate today.”—Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, author of Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away
