Delphin Classics

The Delphin Classics was an edition of the Latin classics, intended to be comprehensive, which was originally created in the 17th century.

The 25 volumes were created in the 1670s for Louis, le Grand Dauphin, heir of Louis XIV (Delphin is the adjective derived from dauphin), and were written in Latin. Thirty-nine scholars contributed to the series, which was edited by Pierre Huet with assistance from several co-editors, including Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet and Anne Dacier. Each work was accompanied by a Latin commentary, ordo verborum, and verbal index. The editors added many notes and appendixes.

The original volumes each had an engraving of Arion and the Dolphin, accompanied by the inscription in usum serenissimi Delphini (for the use of the most serene Dauphin).

Beginning in 1819 a series of Latin classics was published in England under the name Delphin Classics by Abraham John Valpy. This series was edited by George Dyer (poet), who produced 143 volumes. They are no longer current.

There is a reference to them in Part I, Chapter 5 of Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure, where young Jude, trying to educate himself by reading while delivering bread from a horse and cart, "plunge[s] into the simpler passages from Caesar, Virgil, or Horace [. . .] The only copies he had been able to lay hands on were old Delphin editions, because they were superseded, and therefore cheap. But, bad for idle school-boys, it did so happen that they were passably good for him."

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