The full appearance of the Metamorphoses in English translation (sections had appeared in the works of Chaucer and Gower)[69] coincides with the beginning of printing, and traces a path through the history of publishing.[69][70] William Caxton produced the first translation of the text on 22 April 1480;[71] set in prose, it is a literal rendering of a French translation known as the Ovide Moralisé.[72]
In 1567, Arthur Golding published a translation of the poem that would become highly influential, the version read by Shakespeare and Spenser.[73] It was written in rhyming couplets of iambic heptameter. The next significant translation was by George Sandys, produced from 1621 to 1626,[74] which set the poem in heroic couplets, a metre that would subsequently become dominant in vernacular English epic and in English translations.[75]
In 1717, a translation appeared from Samuel Garth bringing together work "by the most eminent hands":[76] primarily John Dryden, but several stories by Joseph Addison, one by Alexander Pope,[77] and contributions from Tate, Gay, Congreve, and Rowe, as well as those of eleven others including Garth himself.[78] Translation of the Metamorphoses after this period was comparatively limited in its achievement; the Garth volume continued to be printed into the 1800s, and had "no real rivals throughout the nineteenth century".[79]
Around the later half of the 20th century a greater number of translations appeared[80] as literary translation underwent a revival.[79] This trend has continued into the twenty-first century.[81] In 1994, a collection of translations and responses to the poem, entitled After Ovid: New Metamorphoses, was produced by numerous contributors in emulation of the process of the Garth volume.[82]
