Sir Samuel Griffith, Dante and the Italian Presence in Nineteenth-Century Australian Literary Culture

Abstract

Sir Samuel Griffith's place in Australian history rests on his public career, as Premier of Queensland, Chief Justice of Queensland, and after Federation as the first Chief Justice of the High Court ofAustralia. But he has another claim to fame. Griffith is the author of the first and only Australian translation of the Divine Comedy. In 1898 Griffith published his first Dante translation, Cantos V, XXXII and XXXIII of the Inferno, the stories of Francesca da Rimini and Ugolino della Gherardesca. Ten years later, his completed translation of Inferno appeared, and in 1911 Oxford University Press issued the Divina Commedia of Dante Alighieri, literally translated into English by the Right Honourable Sir Samuel Walker Griffith C.G.M.G., M.A., Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia. Griffith continued his Dante translation with the Vita Nuova which was printed for private circulation in 1914.