John Edwin Sandys

Who was John Edwin Sandys?

Sir John Edwin Sandys FBA, was a classical scholar.

He was born at Leicester on 19 May 1844, a son of the Reverend Timothy Sandys of the Church Missionary Society and Rebecca. Living at first in India, he returned to England at the age of eleven, and was educated at the Church Missionary Society School in Islington, then at Repton School. In 1863 he won a scholarship to St John’s College, Cambridge.

He obtained a Bell scholarship and won several prizes for Greek and Latin prose. In 1867 he was elected Fellow at his college, and appointed to a lectureship, then later also a tutorship. He was elected public orator in 1876, and was given the title orator emeritus when he retired in 1919. He was awarded honorary doctorates from the universities of Dublin in 1892, Edinburgh in 1909, Athens in 1912 and Oxford in 1920. He was made a Fellow of the British Academy in 1909, and a Commander in the Greek Order of the Saviour. He was awarded his knighthood in 1911.

Besides editing admirably several Greek texts, he published: An Easter Vacation in Greece; a translation and enlargement, with H. Nettleship, of Oskar Seyffert, A Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, Mythology, Religion, Literature, and Art. and The Harvard Lectures on the Revival of Learning. He is best known for the History of Classical Scholarship. He was supervising editor also of A Companion to Latin Studies. New International Encyclopedia