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Plato: The Collected Dialogues
Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (editors)
The one-volume Plato that generations of students and general readers have leaned on. Edited by classicist Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns for Princeton's Bollingen Series, it gathers every dialogue generally accepted as authentic — plus the Letters — in translations chosen from the best British and American hands. Hamilton supplies a prefatory note to each dialogue; Cairns contributes an introductory essay on Plato's thought; and a full index cross-references the varying vocabularies of the different translators, smoothing the seams between them. For anyone who wants the whole of Plato between two covers rather than scattered across paperbacks, this has long been the default. It is a reference and a reading edition at once: authoritative enough for the seminar table, readable enough for the armchair, and comprehensive enough that most readers never need another Plato.
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The editors
Edith Hamilton (1867–1963) was among the most widely read classicists of the twentieth century; her Mythology and The Greek Way introduced the ancient world to a mass readership. Huntington Cairns (1904–1985) was a lawyer and man of letters who served the U.S. Treasury and the National Gallery of Art. Neither produced the translations here; their editorial achievement was curation, framing, and apparatus.
The book
First published in 1961 in the Bollingen Series (LXXI) and kept continuously in print by Princeton University Press, The Collected Dialogues assembles the complete authentic Plato, including the Letters, from translators such as Jowett, Cornford, Hackforth, and Guthrie. Hamilton's prefatory notes and Cairns's introduction orient the newcomer; the index reconciles the translators' differing terms.
How it has aged
As a single-volume gateway it remains unmatched for convenience. Scholars now often prefer the newer Hackett/Cooper Complete Works (1997) for fresher, more consistent translations and fuller notes, and a few renderings here read as mid-century. But for coverage, readability, and staying power, the Hamilton–Cairns edition has earned its longevity.
For more context
Read alongside John M. Cooper's Plato: Complete Works for comparison, and Hamilton's own The Greek Way for her sensibility.
Sources
- Type
- Book
- Author / Maker
- Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (editors)
- Publisher
- Princeton University Press
- Place of publication
- Princeton, NJ
- Edition
- Bollingen Series LXXI
- ISBN
- None
- Shelf
- Spirituality & Philosophy
- Location
- Colorado