This is the first instalment of a three-volume commentary in English, compiled by an international team of scholars and first published in Italian under the auspices of the Fondazione Lorenzo Valla. In this volume the commentary by West (Books I-IV) and Hainsworth (Books V-VIII) is preceded by an introduction which discusses previous research on the Odyssey, the nature of the poem and its relation to the Iliad, the epic dialect, and the transmission of the text. Book VI is a regular GCSE set text.