Introduction
Sir John Edwin Sandys FBA (/ˈsændz/ "Sands"; 19 May 1844 – 6 July 1922), was an English classical scholar.
Life
Born in Leicester, England on 19 May 1844, Sandys was the 4th son of Rev. Timothy Sandys (1803–1871) and Rebecca Swain (1800–1853). Living at first in India, Sandys returned to England at the age of eleven, and was educated at the Church Missionary Society College, Islington, then at Repton School. In 1863 he won a scholarship to St John’s College, Cambridge.
Sandys 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 (1892), Edinburgh (1909), Athens (1912) and Oxford (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 a knighthood in 1911.
Sandys died on 6 July 1922 in Cambridge. He is buried in the Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground in Cambridge.
Works
Besides editing several Greek texts, Sandys published: An Easter Vacation in Greece (1886);a translation and enlargement (with H. Nettleship) of Oskar Seyffert's A Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, Mythology, Religion, Literature and Art (1891);andThe Harvard Lectures on the Revival of Learning (1905). He is best known, however, for his A History of Classical Scholarship (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press) (3 vols.) (vol. 1, 1903; vols. 2 and 3, 1908). He was also supervising editor of A Companion to Latin Studies (1910; 2nd ed., 1913). New International Encyclopedia
Family
On 17 August 1880 John married Mary Grainger Hall (September 1855 – 26 December 1937), daughter of Rev. Henry Hall (1820–1897), vicar of St Paul's Church in Cambridge. Mary was born in St. Albans, Hertfordshire, England, and she died in Vevey, Switzerland, where at the time of her death she was a resident of the Hotel du Lac. She made a bequest to the Museum of Classical Archaeology, Cambridge (founded in 1884) which was the basis of a fund known as the Museum of Classical Archaeology Endowment Fund. John and Mary had no children.