The Manchester Odyssey
The John Rylands Library, The University of Manchester
About The Manchester Odyssey
We know the Odyssey as one of the greatest stories of survival in world literature. The Manchester Odyssey brings us as close and as early as it is possible to get to Homer's epic in book form.
Copied in Egypt in the 3rd century CE, when readers were beginning to abandon scrolls for bound pages, this rare, 1,700 year old parchment manuscript holds a poem at this point already centuries old when written down.
Its folded leaves, ruled lines, worn pages, and corrections bear witness to centuries of reading, care and survival. Now held at The John Rylands Library in Manchester, it has entered a new chapter through conservation, research, and public display.
The Story Survives
For more than two millennia, the Odyssey has shaped how we imagine wandering, homecoming, and the cost of survival. The story’s power lies in the knowledge that survival is never simple; Odysseus comes home changed by war, and the family he left behind must learn to know him again.
Centuries of travel and use have taken their toll on this manuscript, but its fragile condition is part of its power. What survives here is a remarkably substantial portion of the original volume, including Books 12 – 15 and 18 – 24 preserving the narrative of the epic's climatic return to Ithaca. Through these worn but enduring pages, the story of Odysseus’ homecoming and the long-awaited reunion with his family lives on.
The Birth of the Book
The Manchester Odyssey is the earliest surviving example of Homer’s Odyssey in book form.
Known as a codex, this format used folded sheets of parchment to create pages, gradually replacing the continuous scroll. This was more than a change in format; it completely changed how people read. The scribe’s book numbers, still visible on The Manchester Odyssey, helped early readers navigate the poem in this new form.
We can also see that this specific book was deeply loved. A second ancient reader went through the pages to correct mistakes, add missed text and reading marks, all of which point to enduring love of this tale.
Its presence in Manchester adds a modern chapter to that history. At The John Rylands Library, this codex is now part of the University's work of conservation, research, and public engagement. It allows the Odyssey to be encountered not only as a poem, but as a physical object with its own history of survival, and interpretation.
Conservation and Care
The need to protect this fragile artefact was clear the moment it entered the modern world.
In 1900, its then owner, Lord Balcarres, (later the 26th Earl of Crawford) wrote to his librarian, John Philip Edmond, after seeing the manuscript that its centre had “nearly all rotted away,” apparently from damp, and he feared it would be impossible to mount the sheets on parchment. The only alternative at the time was to place “each leaf between 2 sheets of glass,” an “expensive and cumbrous method.”
Conservation practices have advanced significantly since 1900 and the Collection Care team at The John Rylands Library are collaborating with colleagues across The University of Manchester and beyond to pioneer new approaches to the analysis, preservation, stabilisation, and re-housing of the Odyssey codex.
This project has been made possible thanks to the National Manuscripts Conservation Trust who are partly funding the project.
The goal isn't to disguise the damage or artificially make the book look whole again. Instead, we are protecting what remains so its long, scarred history is visible for all to see.
About The John Rylands Library
The John Rylands Library is part of The University of Manchester and is one of the acknowledged great libraries of the world.
Housed in a remarkable neo-Gothic building in the heart of Manchester since 1900, it cares for extraordinary manuscripts, archives and rare books spanning thousands of years.
Visit
If you’d like to discover more about the Library, its collections and its work, please visit:
Visit The Manchester Odyssey
See The Manchester Odyssey on display at The John Rylands Library from Wednesday, 15 July 2026 and encounter one of the earliest surviving versions of Homer.
For more information about special collections:
For media enquiries, please contact Hannah Goodwin.
Built with Shorthand