Andrew Sydenham Farrar Gow

Andrew Sydenham Farrar Gow FBA (born August 27, 1886 in London , † February 2, 1978 ) was a British Graecist .

Life

Gow, son of Revd Dr. James Gow (1854-1923), a Westminster School headmaster , was from London, attended rugby school and studied classics at Trinity College , Cambridge . From 1911 on he was a Fellow of Trinity College. From 1914 to 1925 he was an Assistant Master at Eton College . In 1925 he returned as a lecturer at Trinity College and as a University Lecturer at Cambridge University . From 1929 to 1942 he was also a tutor at Trinity College. In 1943 he was made a Fellow of the British Academy and in 1947 a Brereton Reader in Classics. In 1951 he retired.

Gow was closely related to AE Housman and was a friend of the classical philologist Alwyn Faber Scholfield (1884-1969), the librarian of the Cambridge University Library . At Eton, Gow was George Orwell's tutor. Orwell sought advice from him in 1927 as he contemplated becoming a writer and kept in touch with him.

In 1973 he was awarded the Kenyon Medal for Classical Studies .

Gow's private library, which had been donated to parts of Housman's library when Housman made Gow his literary administrator, was bought by EJ Brill in 1979 . It finally came to the library of Waseda University via a Japanese bookseller . Since 1981 it has been indexed bibliographically as the Gow Bunko special collection of the central library through the Gau bunko mokuroku catalog . It comprises 2,052 volumes on ancient Greek and Latin literature with a special focus on the bucolic poetry of Theocritus.

On October 20, 2012, Brian Sewell suggested that Gow was the "fifth man" and "spy master" of the Cambridge Five .

Research priorities

Gow worked on Hellenistic Greek poetry (on Theocrites and the Bucolics, Nikander , the Greek anthology and Machon ). His life's work is the two-volume annotated edition of Theocrit's poems and the edition of the Greek anthology created and translated together with Denys Page .

Fonts (selection)

Critical text editions

• (Ed.): Theocritus. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1952.
• (Ed.): Bucolici Graeci. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1952 ( Oxford Classical Texts ), ISBN 0-19-814517-9 .
• (Ed., With Alwyn Faber Scholfield ): Nicander. The poems and poetical fragments. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1953.
• (Ed., Transl., With Denys Page): The Greek Anthology: Hellenistic Epigrams. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1965, 2 vols.
• (Ed., Transl., With Denys Page): The Greek Anthology: The Garland of Philip and Some Contemporary Poems. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1968, 2 vols.
• (Ed.): Machon. The Fragments. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1965, hardback ISBN 0-521-05631-4 , paperback ISBN 0-521-60929-1 .

Monographs

• The Greek Anthology: Sources and Ascriptions. London 1958.

On the history of classical philology

• AE Housman. A sketch, together with a list of his writings and an index to his classical papers. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1936, (online) .
• Letters from Cambridge, 1939-1944. Jonathan Cape, London 1945.

literature

• Francis Henry Sandbach : Andrew Sydenham Farrar Gow, 1886–1978. In: Proceedings of the British Academy 64, 1978, 427-441.
• Hugh Lloyd-Jones : Gow, Andrew Sydenham Farrar (1886–1978), classical scholar. In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2004.

Web links

• British Academy: GOW, Mr (27/08 / 1886-02 / 02/1978) .
• archiveshub.ac.uk: Andrew Sydenham Farrar Gow: Correspondence and Papers (Cambridge University Library, Department of Manuscripts and University Archives, Reference Number GB 012 MS.Add.8264); further evidence .
• Brian Sewell: Cambridge don was the spy puppet-master, says Brian Sewell , in: The Times , October 20, 2012.
• Matthew Bell: Outsider II - Almost Always: Never Quite, By Brian Sewell , in: The Independent , November 4, 2012.
• Paul Johnson: Dirty rotten scholars. Brilliance, bitterness and filth in the loftiest of ivory towers , in: The Spectator magazine , February 26, 2011.
• German Institute for Japanese Studies , University Special Collections in Japan: Gow Bunko (Andrew Sydenham Farrar Gow) ガ ウ 文庫 .
• photograph

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Paul Naiditch: Additional Problems in the Life and Writings of AE Housman. Los Angeles 2005, pp. 113-125: The Library of AE Housman , 113-114.