William Hayley’s literary relationship with Dante had a central role in the rediscovery of the Italian poet at the turn of the nineteenth century in England. His knowledge of Dante likely dates back to his student years at Trinity Hall in the 1760s, when he learned “to read, write, and speak Italian with fluency” from his master Agostino Isola, “an elderly, ingenious and distressed Italian” who taught in Cambridge. Hayley invoked Dante in The Triumphs of Temper (1781) and An Essay on Epic Poetry (1782) and was one of the earliest to attempt rendering the Commedia from the original terza rima, offering the most extended English version available in print at the time. The translation was first published in his notes to An Essay on Epic Poetry and encompassed the first three cantos of Inferno. Contemporary writers’ views on his Dante translation, particularly those expressed by Anna Seward and Horace Walpole, are significant. Seward had little admiration for “the fire and smoke poet” and Walpole was notorious for his hostility to Dante. However, they greatly admired Hayley’s version, even more so than Boyd’s. In a letter to Helen Williams, Seward confesses that “after reading and comparing it with Mr. Hayley’s sublime English version of the three first cantos, we cannot place great confidence in Boyd’s justice to his author” (25 August 1785). Boyd himself praised Hayley’s translation and highlighted that in his edition “many biographical particulars of Dante, are taken from Mr. Hayley’s Notes to his Essay on Epic Poetry.” But Hayley’s An Essay on Epic Poetry, apart from his acclaimed translation of the Commedia, includes other noteworthy parts such as his translations of sonnets by Dante, Petrarch, and Camõens and a series of European poets’ biographies, including those of Dante, Boccaccio, and Tasso. In his sketch of Dante’s life, Hayley emphasizes “the lighter graces of sprightly composition,” going beyond the common perception of Dante as a poet “inclined to melancholy.” Hayley’s notes raise questions about the readership of Italian poetry at the time, particularly in what way poets such as Dante were introduced to the English reader, and how the inclusion of Dante’s biography in An Essay might have contributed to the reception of his verse-in-translation. This chapter revolves around the exploration of these concerns in order to contextualize Hayley as a prominent figure who, besides his important connections to Blake and Romney, crucially contributed to literary and artistic negotiations across borders.