Cary, Henry Francis

Henry Francis Cary, (born Dec. 6, 1772, Gibraltar—died Aug. 14, 1844, London, Eng.), English biographer and translator, best known for his blank verse translation of The Divine Comedy of Dante.

Educated at the University of Oxford, Cary took Anglican orders in 1796 and was later assistant librarian in the British Museum. He published biographies of English and French poets and translated the ancient Greek writers Aristophanes and Pindar. Although Cary’s translation of Dante hardly reproduces the original’s great strength, it manages to retain some of its vividness. The Inferno appeared in 1805–06; the whole work, under the title The Vision, or Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, of Dante, in 1814. It was long the standard English translation of Dante’s masterpiece.