The research on E. A. Sophocles is moving along nicely, thanks to the team that the assistant director of The Greek Institute assigned to me, with all manners of information about this eccentric Harvard professor literally coming out of the woodwork. It still feels a little strange having people do the legwork for me, though, so it was a happy surprise that I stumbled upon the following book all by myself:
Author : Winterer, Caroline, 1966-
Title : The culture of classicism : ancient Greece and Rome in American intellectual life, 1780-1910 / Caroline Winterer.
Published : Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.
This could be an important find. Up until now my team has been unearthing a ton of anecdotes about "Old Sophie", but unfortunately they're more about his odd behaviors and mannerisms than his contribution to the intellectual history of Harvard University and 19th Century America as a whole. While Winterer's book only deals with our man tangentially, her bibliography is worth its weight in gold, and will give us myriad leads to follow in hunting down Sophocles the scholar and Hellenist, rather than Sophocles the quaint Greek from the village (however much fun it is to read about him!).
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