Now available in English for the first time, Franco Ferraris important Sapphos Gift: The Poet and Her Community offers extraordinary new insight into the life and works of Sappho, one of the ancient worlds most brilliant poets. One of the very few women writers whose works have survived from antiquity, Sappho occupies a unique spot in literature in part because of her gender but more importantly because of the light she sheds on her time and place Archaic Greece. Ferraris study begins with the fragmentary evidence about the poems provided by papyri, and moves on to consider Sapphos iconography, the types of poems and their occasions, and her audience, meaning both her immediate circle of companions as well as competing groups and people in the larger community. Franco Ferrari is professor of Greek literature at the University of Aquila. He is the author of six books and many articles on Greek literature, and his version of Sappho's songs (Rizzoli, 1987) won the Latina prize. Benjamin Acosta-Hughes (University of Michigan Ann Arbor) has most recently written The New Simonides and Theocritus (forthcoming 2009); Lucia Prauscello (Trinity Hall, Cambridge University) is the author of