Alfred Chilton Pearson

Alfred Chilton Pearson (8 October 1861 – 2 January 1935) was an English classical scholar, noted for his work on Greek tragedy.^[1]

Life

After education at King's College School and Highgate School Pearson went up to Christ's College, Cambridge to read classics where he graduated in 1883.^[2] After practising briefly as a barrister Pearson spent ten years (1890-1900) as a schoolmaster before entering his late father's business. During this period he produced school editions of some of the plays of Sophocles, culminating in 1917 with his magnum opus, an edition of the Fragments of Sophocles, a work left unfinished on his death by Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb.^[1]

At the age of 58, and despite a life spent outside academia, Pearson was elected in 1919 as the Gladstone Professor of Greek at the University of Liverpool, subsequently becoming in 1921 the Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Trinity College.

In 1924, the year of his election as a Fellow of the British Academy,^[3] Pearson published his edition of the works of Sophocles in the Oxford Classical Texts series,^[1] which remained in print until superseded in 1990 by the edition of Hugh Lloyd-Jones and N.G.Wilson.^[4]

Publications

• The Fragments of Zeno and Cleanthes: With Introduction and Explanatory Notes, 1891, ISBN 1-112-57556-1
• The Ajax of Sophocles, edited by A.C.Pearson based on the edition of R.C.Jebb, 1912
• Fragments of Sophocles - Edited With Additional Notes From the Papers of Sir R.C. Jebb and W.G. Headlam, 3 volumes, Cambridge University Press 1917
• Fabulae recognovit brevique adnotatione critica instruxit A.C. Pearson - Oxford Classical Text, Clarendon Press, 1924

Notes

1. DNB, Extracted 19 October 2010
2. "Pearson, Alfred Chilton (PR879AC)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
3. British Academy fellowship entry
4. Review of Lloyd-Jones and Wilson OCT, Classical Review

References

• George Chatterton Richards: Alfred Chilton Pearson. A Memoir. London 1935.