The subject of this chapter - in keeping with its chronological place in this section - is the importance of Homer for English epic up to the end of the eighteenth century. Its rationale, however, is not solely diachronic: the starting point is rather a widely accepted premise that between what goes before and what comes after there is a fault-line in the nature of the availability of Homer to English literary consciousness. A critical event can be readily identified, in the publication of F. A.Wolf’s Prolegomena to Homer of 1795. This work itself is the product of a period of change and questioning: the eighteenth century saw a steady growth in historical, topographical and antiquarian interest in the ancient world. In relation to Homer, Robert Wood had provided one of the most influential landmarks in his investigation, based on travels undertaken in the early 1750s, of Homer’s own time and culture, An Essay on the Original Genius of Homer (1769). Wolf, however, is definitive: