John Conington’s three-volume edition of The Works of Virgil, begun in 1852, has long been unavailable except in rare second–hand sets. The whole work is now being reissued in six
affordable paperbacks, with new introductions setting the commentary in its context. Well into the twentieth century Conington’s Virgil remained the sine qua non for school and
undergraduate students and their teachers; Conington’s commentary is remarkably close and uncompromising in its engagement with the detail of Virgil’s Latin, as well as its literary
sensitivity; it still has much to offer the modern reader.
