Loeb Classical Library
Our History
Now over a century old, the Loeb Classical Library is a venerable institution. But the series was a revolution when it was founded. Virginia Woolf was among those who first recognized and cheered that revolution:
“The Loeb Library, with its Greek or Latin on one side of the page and its English on the other, came as a gift of freedom… The existence of the amateur was recognised by the publication of this Library, and to a great extent made respectable… The difficulty of Greek is not sufficiently dwelt upon, chiefly perhaps because the sirens who lure us to these perilous waters are generally scholars [who] have forgotten…what those difficulties are. But for the ordinary amateur they are very real and very great; and we shall do well to recognise the fact and to make up our minds that we shall never be independent of our Loeb.”
—Virginia Woolf, The Times Literary Supplement, 1917
Founding a Classical Tradition
More: http://www.loebclassics.com/page/history