The following biography is taken from the Dutch version of Wikipedia (with the help of Google translator!). Apologies for any remaining infelicities in translation. There isn't an English entry. The accompanying pictures give evidence of the meticulous scholar mentioned in the Wikipedia notes. They show Summers' copy of the Latin dictionary, 'Lewis and Short'. thoroughly annotated and corrected(!) throughout and the notebooks that he painstaking complied with notes and vocabulary lists for his published editions mentioned below. Summers' Papers may be consulted in the Special Collections of the Sheffield University Library. Thanks to them for allowing me to see them. Peter Hulse Walter Coventry Summers (1869 - Torquay, 30 March 1937) was a British Latinist, specialist in the field of so-called 'silver latin' (literature from the period after Augustus), professor at the University of Sheffield. After being a fellow at St John's College (Cambridge) and assistant lecturer at Owens College in Manchester, W.C. Summers in 1909 was appointed Firth Professor of Latin in Sheffield. Here he remained active until 1930. His most famous publication is his Select letters of Seneca from 1910. In the foreword, he thanks his publisher that he has dared to publish a book that probably only few readers will find. It shows how much Summers was a pioneer in this field, and how much the study of Latin was burdened with prejudices (negative with respect to Seneca, positive with respect to the literature from the August period, the so-called 'golden' Latin). But the book has been reprinted numerous times until the 1990s. Summers precedes his selection from Seneca's letters with a very detailed analysis of Seneca's language use [1]. He emphasizes the use that Seneca makes of terms from everyday language use (colloquial elements). He also traces the history of what he calls the pointed style in Latin prose; this is the style technique of short, flashy sentences characteristic of the silver latin, with many unexpected turns, paradoxes, contradictions and the like [2]. He also gives a résumé of the reception history of Seneca's work through the ages. The book was received positively [3] The silver age or Latin literature from Tiberius to Trajan can be seen as the conclusion of his professional activity. In this he deals with every literary genre (roughly) in the first century after Christ, concluding each chapter with the later after-effects of the treated works / writers. Again, however, he considers it necessary to justify himself for the fact that he asks attention for this period in literary history; given some reactions [4] this was not entirely unnecessary. Publications: 1894: A study of the Argonautica or Valerius Flaccus 1900: C. Sallusti Crispi Catilina 1901: P. Ovidi Nasonis Metamorphoseon liber VIII. Edited with introduction, notes, vocabulary and index 1902: C. Sallusti Crispi Iugurtha. Edited with introduction, notes and index 1904: Cornelii Taciti Historiarvm liber III. Edited with Introduction, Notes and Index 1910: Select letters or Seneca. Edited with introductions and explanatory notes 1920: The Silver Age of Latin literature from Tiberius to Trajan. Furthermore, in the second part of J.P. Postgate’s Corpus Poetarum Latinorum (1905) he provided the text of the satires of Persius and the Punica of Silius Italicus. Sources, notes and / or references [1] This is done in an extremely detailed way. As far as Seneca's use of words is concerned, for example, Summers has made lists with words that occur for the first time at Seneca, words that preceded Seneca only in poetry, and words that are only found in other writers whose language is also characterized by terms from everyday speech. [2] A manner of writing that fitted well with the Latin language (the style which I was call pointed to, after all, one natural adapted to the Roman temperament, the Roman language (The Silver Age of Latin literature from Tiberius to Trajan, p. 15) ', and is already to be found in the work of Cato, and in the early speeches of Cicero, but it is a process that, even according to Summers, is not entirely without risks: the readiness to sacrifice the whole to the part that is so prominent a feature in Silver writing. (Ibidem, p. 5) [3] Eg. H. E. Butler in The Classical Review, 24 (07), pp. 224-225 (1910): "With regard to the text and notes there is singularly little to criticize". [4] See also eg these quotes from an otherwise benevolent review of this work (The Spectator, April 22, 1921): Tacitus, after all, is the only one of the post-Augustans who really matters very much. It is to be feared that the literary fashions of these post Augustan times were essentially decadent fashions, the child that made bath art in every century. But there is a good art and Professor Summers has undoubtedly written one.
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