Richard Jenkyns was an undergraduate at Balliol College, Oxford. He was a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, from 1972 to 1981, Lecturer in Classics, University of Bristol, 1978-81, and from 1981 to 2010 he was a Fellow and Tutor in Classics at Lady Margaret Hall.
He became Professor of the Classical Tradition in 1999 and the University’s Public Orator in 2004. He was awarded a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship 2007-10.
Research interests:
The classical tradition, especially in the nineteenth century; Latin poetry; epic. He is currently working on a book on God, Space and City in the Roman Imagination.
Selected publications:
- The Victorians and Ancient Greece (1980). (Arts Council National Book Award for Creative Non-Fiction, 1981; Yorkshire Post ‘Best First Work 1980 Award’, 1981; runner-up to Literary Review Award, 1981)
- Three Classical Poets: Sappho, Catullus and Juvenal (1982).
- Dignity and Decadence: Victorian art and the classical inheritance (1991).
- Classical Epic: Homer and Virgil (1992).
- (ed) The Legacy of Rome: a new appraisal (1992).
- Virgil’s Experience: Nature and History; Times, Names and Places (1998).
- Westminster Abbey (2004).
- A Fine Brush on Ivory: an appreciation of Jane Austen (2004).