“A rich, probing, and delightfully engaging study of the concept of variety as it circulates through multiple poetic traditions, primarily Latin and English. Fitzgerald is a masterful reader of poetry, both erudite and wonderfully attentive to textual nuance. There is much here for classicists and comparatists, specialists and generalists alike.”
— John Hamilton, Harvard University
“A welcome and significant contribution to contemporary discussion of aspects of variety and miscellaneity in antiquity. . . . Fitzgerald’s exploration of varietas is important both for its excavation of Roman material and for identifying so many significant texts and aspects of variety beyond the miscellany alone. He makes a strong case that varietas marks reflection on a concept whose contours allow some definition, and that this is worth studying in both ancient and modern contexts, and in the relationship between them.”
— Bryn Mawr Classical Review
“Rich and wide-ranging. . . . Fitzgerald’s approach is an elegant one, delicately blending argumentation and promenade to construct a suitably dappled portrait of his subject.”
— Times Literary Supplement
“A welcome and exciting book. . . . It opens up a new area of discussion, and invites us to take a more literary and aesthetic approach to issues of variety.”
— Expository Times
“An important study of the concept of variety and miscellany in antiquity, and the reception of that concept. . . . Recommended.”
— Choice
"By tackling such an apparently amorphous idea as 'variety', Fitzgerald ran the risk of writing a lot about nothing. Instead, he has written a lot about something, a something that - like a clue in a Sherlock Holmes mystery - has been lying in plain sight. Once the master sleuth perceives the clue, a mystery is unlocked. I therefore recommend this book to linguists, classicists and those who enjoy a good mystery."
— Sun News Miami
"Fitzgerald has written a thoroughly captivating book—one that achieves that rare combination of erudition and pleasant reading."
— PopMatters
"This elegant book is many things at once: a surprising chapter in the history of ideas, a collection of snappy new interpretations of key Greek and Latin texts from Horace’s Odes to Gellius’ Attic Nights, and a deviant experiment in Reception Studies. . . . [Fitzgerald's] shifting attention is performative and heuristic: herein lies the real provocation and stimulus of this timely, impressive book."
— Journal of Roman Studies