Searching for Sappho: The Lost Songs and World of the First Woman Poet

Sappho, the female lyric poet from the island of Lesbos in ancient Greece, succeeded as a writer when women were seen as chattel—wool weavers, housekeepers, and incubators of heirs. The passage of time rendered her work incomplete, with only remnants surviving on fragile fragments of papyrus, yet a fascination with her words and with her life persists in contemporary Western society. Freeman (classics, Luther Coll.; Oh My Gods: A Modern Retelling of Greek and Roman Myths) uses Sappho's poetry, along with primary and secondary sources, to curate a hypothetical portrait of Sappho's life as well as an intriguing glimpse into the lives of women in the centuries surrounding her lifetime. The complex and progressive views on sexuality and religion in ancient Greece are also discussed. Freeman's writing is augmented with annotations, several photographs, a map, and a time line. The entirety of Sappho's surviving poetry appears in a dedicated section at the end of the book.