Classics in Britain

Scholarship, Education, and Publishing 1800-2000

Christopher Stray

Classical Presences

Brings together previously published articles and never before published work in an accessible and engaging overview of work by a leading scholar in the field
All previously published work has been revised and edited to create an overarching narrative and analysis intended to stimulate further critical discussion
Explores the relatively understudied topic of education as reception, stressing the linkage between schools, universities, and publishing

Classics in Britain

Scholarship, Education, and Publishing 1800-2000

Christopher Stray

Description

This unique volume summarizes and reflects the work of a leading voice in the history of Classics in Britain, bringing together both previously published articles, now newly revised, and never before published work. Topics range from the school classroom to the politics of universities, and from the social uses of classical knowledge to the publishing of textbooks: although the volume as a whole maintains a particular focus on the role of books and journals in the reception of Classics, the chapters also draw on anecdotal and documentary sources to offer a vivid exploration of the more obscure corners of the world of nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars, teachers, and pupils.

The book is divided into three parts, the first of which illustrates the utility of comparative analysis of institutions, focusing on Oxford and Cambridge in particular; the second looks at the transformative role of printing and publishing, and at the history of the Hellenic Society (1879) and the Classical Association (1903), in relation to the changing place of Classics in British society. The third focuses on pedagogy, examining textbooks and classroom activity and stressing the dialectical nature of reception, as evidenced by the resistance of pupils to their teachers' lessons. Engaging and insightful in isolation, together they offer an expansive and unparalleled overview of the history and sociology of classical education and scholarship between 1800 and 2000.

Classics in Britain

Scholarship, Education, and Publishing 1800-2000

Christopher Stray

Classical Presences

Frontmatter
List of Illustrations
Sources of Chapters
0. Introduction, Constanze Guthenke
I Scholarship and Institutions
1. Purity in Danger: The Contextual Life of Savants
2. Curriculum and Style in the Collegiate University: Classics in Nineteenth-Century Oxbridge
3. Thomas Gaisford: Legion, Legend, Lexicographer
4. The Rise and Fall of Porsoniasm
5. Renegotiating Classics: The Politics of Curricular Reform in Late Victorian Cambridge
II Scholarship and Publishing
6. Politics, Culture, and Scholarship: Classics in the Quarterly Review 1809-24
7. From one Museum to Another: The Museum Criticum (1813-26) and the Philological Museum (1831-13)
8. The Classical Review and its Precursors
9. Sir William Smith and his Dictionaries: A Study in Scarlet and Black
10. Jebb's Sophocles: An Edition and its Maker
11. Promoting and Defending: Reflections on the History of the Hellenic Society (1879) and the Classical Association (1903)
12. Scholars, Gentlemen, and Schoolboys: The Authority of Latin in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century England
III Schools and Schoolbooks
13. Paper Wraps Stone: The Beginnings of Educational Lithography
14. John Taylor and 'Locke s Classical System'
15. Schoolboys and Gentlemen: Classical Pedagogy and Authority in the English Public School
16. Edward Adolf Sonnenschein and the Politics of Linguistic Authority in England, 1880-1930
17. Primers, Publishing, and Politics: The Classical Textbooks of Benjamin Hall Kennedy
18. The Smell of Latin Grammar: Contrary Imaginings in English Classrooms
Endmatter
Bibliography
Index

Classics in Britain

Scholarship, Education, and Publishing 1800-2000

Christopher Stray

Classical Presences

Author Information

Christopher Stray, Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Classics and Ancient History, Swansea University

Christopher Stray is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at Swansea University and the holder of qualifications in Classics, sociology, and education. After spending time teaching in schools, he has devoted himself to research and publication on the history of Classics in schools and universities, working extensively in archives of British, Irish, Greek, and American institutions. He co-founded the Textbook Colloquium in 1988 with Ian Michael and has authored and (co-)edited several works on classical and other textbooks, though he is best known for his major study, Classics Transformed: Schools, Universities, and Society in England, 1830-1960 (OUP, 1998). He is currently working on studies of the Hellenists E. R. Dodds and Kenneth Dover, and on Liddell and Scott's Greek lexicon, as well as writing chapters on Classics and education for the forthcoming history of Trinity College, Cambridge.

Contributors:

Constanze Guthenke, Associate Professor Greek Literature at the University of Oxford

Classics in Britain

Scholarship, Education, and Publishing 1800-2000

Christopher Stray

Classical Presences

Reviews and Awards

"...the eighteen essays collected here, all but two previously published, unfold a record of past practices and the larger debates they engendered that offer much-needed perspective on our current travails...an invaluable resource as we look to our past for help in shaping our future." -- Sander M. Goldberg, University of California, The Classical Journal

"[Stray] has extensively researched the history of textbooks, and there is much curious detail here." -- John Taylor, University of Manchester, The Journal of Roman Studies

"Classics in Britain constitutes another clear and bright beam through the often opaque history of British Classics as a scholarly discipline... Perhaps the most precious feature of Stray's magisterial tome is his finely tuned ear to the periods' witty or ridiculous turns of phrase, his keen eye for enriching but not overburdening detail, and the occasional oddball fact, all of which make his writing about let's face it often austere, sometimes dry, subject matter both impressively learned and amusingly human." -- Emma Bridges and Henry Stead , Greece & Rome

"Over the past thirty years or so Christopher Stray has made himself uniquely expert in what might be called the sociology of British Classics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries... One of the merits (and charms) of Stray's work is his ability to find unusual ways of looking at things... Stray offers a thickness of detail through which a larger idea of British classical studies is well conveyed." -- Richard Jenkyns, Bryn Mawr Classical Review