Short answers, pulled from the story.
Homer is the credited author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, though his existence remains unconfirmed by contemporary records. Scholars generally regard the ancient conception of a single author behind these two massive epics as a fictional narrative constructed to explain their unity.
Most researchers believe the Homeric poems were composed at some point around the late eighth or early seventh century BC. The poems bear the marks of a long history of oral transmission that complicates the search for a precise date.
Biographical details about Homer's life became mythologized, with stories claiming he was a blind bard from Ionia, a region including the central part of the western coast of Anatolia in present-day Turkey. Most accounts of his death place its location on Ios.
The Homeric poems were originally transmitted orally, a fact that fundamentally shapes their structure and language. These poems were composed in unrhymed dactylic hexameters and frequently use set phrases such as epithets like crafty Odysseus and rosy-fingered Dawn.
In antiquity, it was widely held that the Homeric poems were collected and organized in Athens in the late sixth century BC by Pisistratus. Pisistratus died in 528 or 527 BC, and this event is known as the Peisistratean recension.
Homer is considered one of the most influential authors in history, shaping aspects of ancient Greek culture and education. The first printed edition of Homer was produced in 1488 in Milan, Italy by Demetrios Chalkokondyles.