Since her rise to notoriety among the dissident artists of the 1970s Leningrad underground, Elena Shvarts (1948-2010) has earned a place in the canon of great Russian poets for the originality, riotousness, beauty, and deceptive erudition of her poetry. Many of Shvarts's greatest poems were inspired by classical antiquity - the literature, myth, and history of ancient Rome and Greece. Her antiquity is never static: it evolves in response to the seismic changes that Russia underwent during her lifetime. In this in-depth study Georgina Barker follows Shvarts's transcendental and escapist encounters with classical antiquity from wild youth to defiant old age, and discovers Shvarts shaping antiquity to fit herself.

An appendix of Barker's translations of Shvarts's classical poems and archival transcriptions of previously unpublished poems gives anglophone and russophone readers alike unprecedented access to Elena Shvarts's classical antiquity.

Georgina Barker is Leverhulme Early-Career Fellow in the Department of Greek and Latin at UCL.