The Odyssey follows the Greek hero and king of Ithaca, Odysseus, and his homecoming journey after the ten-year long Trojan War.

His journey from Troy to Ithaca lasts an additional ten years, during which time he encounters many perils and all of his crewmates are killed.

[5] The composition of the translation's frontispiece shows Homer in the midst of a company of laurel-crowned spirits, whose ethereal forms are expressed in stipple, with legends which read: "Solus ſapit hic homo, Reliqui vero," and "Umbræ mouentur."

[6] The illustration of Homer with the spirits is a reference to Circe's description of Tiresias:[7] Even in death, Persephone granted to him alone the use of his wisdom, but the others are shadows that flit around.Modern reception to Chapman's Odyssey is mixed.

Chapman scholar Millar MacLure notes that undergraduate English literature students can identify issues with his translation.

[16] Samuel Taylor Coleridge said Chapman's version was as original as Edmund Spenser's "The Faerie Queene" (1590) but provides readers with a "small idea of Homer".

Coleridge highlighted it within an English historical context, saying Chapman's version was Homer if "he lived in England in the reign of Queen Elizabeth".