'Meditations, The George Long Translation (1862)': Marcus Aurelius's Complete Twelve Books in George Long's Classic 1862 Translation, Verified Against the First Printing

The private notebook of a Roman emperor, in the translation that taught the English-speaking world to read it

NEW YORK, Oct. 29, 2026, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius has been published in George Long's classic 1862 translation, the complete twelve books, all 487 sections, verified word by word against the 1862 first printing. Meditations, The George Long Translation (1862) (Companion Classics), edited by Horace Harriott Jr., presents Long's translation with the silent misprints and modernized spellings of later reprints corrected back to what Long actually wrote, and adds an introduction, a who's-who, five explainers, a short life of Marcus Aurelius, a period-context note, and discussion questions for every book.

Marcus Aurelius, emperor of Rome from A.D. 161 to 180, wrote the Meditations in Greek, in camp on the Danube frontier, for himself alone. He never meant it for publication, and it survived antiquity by a thread. George Long's 1862 version was the standard English Meditations for a hundred years, the translation through which generations of English-speaking readers, Matthew Arnold's among them, met the emperor. This edition prints Long because Long is the point, and says so on the cover: the translation is named in the title because here it is the product's honesty and its selling point. Modern renderings are different books by different translators; none of their words appear here.

Apparatus

The apparatus includes an introduction on the emperor's notebook, the wars and plague of the 170s, and why this edition prints Long 1862; a who's-who covering Antoninus Pius, Faustina, Rusticus, Fronto, Epictetus, Heraclitus, and the teachers of Book I; five explainers, Stoicism in one sitting, how the text survived by a thread, why translations differ, the Rome of the 170s, and how to read this book; a short, honest life of Marcus Aurelius, the Commodus succession included; a period-context note on slavery, empire, and the persecution question under his reign; and discussion questions for every one of the twelve books, plus eight on the whole work, written for George Long's text and keyed to his sections.

Book Club Kit

Alongside the book, the Meditations Book Club Kit offers the edition's discussion material as a printable PDF, arranged as a three-meeting schedule, sections read aloud in rotation, one sat with in silence, a commonplace book kept together, with 44 questions keyed to Long's sections. The kit is available for $7 through the editor's Payhip store: https://payhip.com/b/SPCJW

Availability

Meditations, The George Long Translation (1862) is available now as an eBook ($9.99) through Payhip: https://payhip.com/b/UT1Jm, paperback and hardcover print editions follow on Amazon. The text and Long's translation are public domain (Long died in 1879); all companion material is original to this edition.

About the editor

Horace Harriott Jr. is a New York-based author and editor of more than two dozen books, including The Side Hustle Handbook, Master Playbook and The Ultimate Commissary Cookbook. This edition is part of his Companion Classics series of reading-together editions of public-domain classics.

About the book

Meditations, The George Long Translation (1862), Marcus Aurelius (author), George Long (translator, 1862), Horace Harriott Jr. (editor). Companion Classics, independently published, October 2026. Twelve books, 487 sections; interior proof 204 pages, 6 x 9 in.