Henry Rushton Fairclough

Henry Rushton Fairclough (born July 15, 1862 in Barrie , Ontario , † February 12, 1938 in Palo Alto , California ) was an American classical philologist of Canadian origin. He taught and researched from 1893 to 1927 at Stanford University .

Life

Henry Rushton Fairclough, the son of James Fairclough and Elizabeth Erving Fairclough, attended the Hamilton Collegiate Institute and studied Classical Philology at the University of Toronto . After the Bachelor's degree in 1883 he was a Fellow at the city's University College and 1884-1885 teacher of Latin, Greek and English at the high school in Brockville . From 1885 to 1886 he completed his graduate studies and graduated with a master’s degree ; then he was hired as a lecturer in Greek and ancient history .

In 1893, Fairclough left Canada and went to Stanford University in California as Associate Professor of Greek and Latin , where he spent his entire career. He deepened his studies at Johns Hopkins University , where he was particularly influenced by the classical philologists Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve and Minton Warren and the Sanskrit researcher Maurice Bloomfield . 1896 Fairclough became a Ph. D. doctorate . A year later (1897) he was appointed Professor of Classical Literature at Stanford University, and in 1902 Professor of Latin. In 1903 he made his first educational and study trip to Europe, especially to Italy and Greece. For the year 1910/1911 Fairclough accepted an invitation to the American School of Classical Studies in Rome (as acting director ). During the First World War he served with the American Red Cross in Switzerland and Montenegro from 1918 to 1919 and received numerous awards.

After returning to Stanford University, Fairclough was appointed Professor of Classical Literature in 1922. In the same year, his alma mater , the University of Toronto, awarded him an honorary doctorate (LL. D.). In 1925/1926 Fairclough was visiting professor of Latin and Greek at Harvard University and at the same time president of the American Philological Association ; in this capacity he gave a speech on December 29, 1926 entitled The Classics and Our Twentieth-Century Poets , which was printed the following year. In 1927, Fairclough retired from Stanford University, but continued to teach as a visiting professor at Amherst College until 1929 .

Fairclough's research focused on the Roman poets. He wrote translations and bilingual editions of the comedies of Plautus and Terence , the works of Virgil and the satires and epistles of Horace . He also published text-critical and exegetical individual studies on these authors and two monographs on the Greek and Roman perception of nature . Three years after his death, his autobiography was published posthumously under the title Warming Both Hands , in which he describes his career and in particular his experiences during the First World War.

Fonts (selection)

• The Attitude of the Greek Tragedians toward Nature . Toronto 1897 (dissertation)
• P. Terenti Afri Andria . Boston 1901
• with Augustus Taber Murray: The Antigone of Sophocles . San Francisco 1902
• with Seldon L. Brown: Virgil's Aeneid I – VI . Boston / New York 1908
• with Leon J. Richardson: The Phormio of Terence . Boston 1909
• The Trinummus of Plautus . New York 1909
• Virgil . 2 volumes, New York / London 1916–1918 ( Loeb Classical Library )
• Horace's Satires, Epistles, and Ars Poetica . New York / London 1926 ( Loeb Classical Library )
• The Classics and Our Twentieth-Century Poets . Palo Alto 1927
• Love of Nature among the Greeks and Romans . New York 1927
• Some Aspects of Horace . San Francisco 1935
• Warming both hands. The Autobiography of Henry Rushton Fairclough, Including his Experiences under the American Red Cross in Switzerland and Montenegro . Palo Alto / London 1941 (with picture)

literature

• Ward W. Briggs : Fairclough, Henry Rushton . In: Derselbe (ed.): Biographical Dictionary of North American Classicists . Westport, CT / London: Greenwood Press 1994, ISBN 978-0-313245-60-2 , pp. 170f.

Web links

• Entry on Henry Rushton Fairclough in the Database of Classical Scholars (English)
• Obituary for Henry Rushton Fairclough
• Information on the estate of Henry Rushton Fairclough