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Melissa Mueller, professor of classics in the College of Humanities and Fine Arts, has edited a new collector's edition of Mary Barnard's translation of Sappho, which will be published Sept. 1 by the University of California Press.

“Sappho: A New Translation,” was first published in 1958 and has remained in print since. For the new reissue, “Sappho: The Mary Barnard Translation (Collector's Edition),” Mueller wrote a new introduction and compiled the original Greek for the 100 poems and fragments Barnard translated, making it the first edition to present Barnard's English alongside the Greek.

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Barnard (1909–2001) was an American poet and translator who studied Greek at Reed College and began translating at the suggestion of Ezra Pound in the 1930s. Rather than presenting the fragments as isolated scraps, she arranged them into a sequence that follows a woman's life. Her version became the one through which generations of English-language readers first encountered the poet. The new edition retains the foreword Dudley Fitts wrote for the original.

Mueller has taught at UMass Amherst since 2007 and writes on archaic and classical Greek poetry, with research interests in new materialisms, reparative reading, and gender and sexuality studies. She previously authored the books “Sappho and Homer: A Reparative Reading” and “Objects as Actors,” and is also co-editor of the anthology “The Materialities of Greek Tragedy” and the series “Ancient Cultures, New Materialisms.”