Edward Courtney was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He became simply one of the finest classical philologists in the world of his day. A lavishly awarded student at Trinity College, Dublin, he was lecturer at Christ Church, Oxford, then rose to full professor at King’s College, London, before moving to Stanford as Ely Professor of Classics and then to Charlottesville where in 1993 he became the first in a distinguished line of Gildersleeve Professors. He was the author of eleven books, mostly critical editions and commentaries on Latin poets of the Silver Age and numerous articles, totaling approximately 130 publications in all. He died in Charlottesville on November 24, 2019 at the age of 87.
