Author Description

Born in Dublin and classically educated at Trinity College, James Henry (1798-1876) practised as a doctor for more than twenty years before an inheritance allowed him to focus on the close study of Virgil's Aeneid. Travelling extensively across Europe, Henry conferred with eminent scholars and consulted numerous manuscripts. After the death of his wife in 1849, he was accompanied and ably assisted in his quest by his sole surviving daughter, Katherine Olivia (1830-72). In 1853 he published in Dresden his textual analysis of the poem's first six books. Reissued here is the version that appeared in Britain in 1859. This painstaking research was in turn incorporated into Henry's monumental multi-volume commentary, Aeneidea, published between 1873 and 1892 and now also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection. The present work throws much light on both the ancient text and the approach of an idiosyncratic and indefatigable Virgilian scholar.