Stesichorus is arguably the most elusive among the lyric poets of the Greek literary canon. His name (roughly ‘the one who sets up the chorus’) sounds like an indicator of professional capacity. Ancient sources are discordant about his fatherland, the most frequent candidates being Himera in Sicily and Mataurum in Southern Italy. The focus of his activity was claimed by Himera, Locri, Catane. His chronology was also uncertain: for some he was the son of Hesiod (8th or 7th century); for others a contemporary of the tyrant Phalaris (active in the 6th century); the poet Simonides (late 6th/early 5th century) refers to him by name; one entry in an important chronological inscription mentions his arrival in Greece around 485; a further one indicates a victory of ‘Stesichorus of Himera the Second’ around 368, a datum compatible with another source (PMG 841) mentioning a Dithyramb of Stesichorus on the Cyclops in a context suggesting a 4th century date. As far as we can see, Stesichorus’ poems offered no explicit link to their historical or biographical context. Most of them were absorbing and innovative mythological narratives, in lyric metres and epic style and scale, that enjoyed popularity and exerted influence on audiences and poets for centuries. Very little of this, though, survived the end of antiquity, and it was only with 20th century papyrological discoveries that, to some extent, these works came back to life. Most finds were published between the 1960s and 1990. While many fragments have attracted considerable studies, a new comprehensive critical edition, with full introduction and commentary, was obviously needed. The rich work of Davies and Finglass now fills the gap. Davies produced an Oxford DPhil thesis in 1979, covering the texts available then. This has now been enlarged and updated in collaboration with Finglass, who has covered also the texts published since then, and is entirely responsible for the critical edition (with a new and much improved numeration of the fragments) and the introduction (that includes a good section on style).