Monday, July 17, 2017
A Scholar Working in Isolation
Maurice Platnauer, review of John Jackson, Marginalia Scaenica (London: Oxford University Press, 1955), in Classical Review 6.2 (June, 1956) 112-115 (at 112):
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The greater part of Jackson's life was spent not in the studious seclusion of a university but in a remote village in the wilds of Cumberland, where he managed his mother's farm, his reading and writing being of necessity done on his return from the day's work. He was further inhibited by having no public library to which to go for new editions or books of reference, and by the fact that his own texts and commentaries were neither very numerous nor always up to date; yet he has produced a collected body of emendations the like of which, at least for brilliance and ingenuity, has not seen the light of day since the publication of Madvig's Adversaria and Cobet's Variae and Novae Lectiones more than a century ago.
