Rex Warner

Rex Warner (March 9 1905 - June 24 1986) was an English classicist, writer and translator. He is now probably best remembered for his novel The Aerodrome (1941), a forerunner in the territory later occupied by J. G. Ballard, with homage to Kafka.

He was born in Birmingham, England and brought up mainly in Gloucestershire, where his father was a clergyman. He was educated at St. George’s School in Harpenden, and at Wadham College, Oxford, where he associated with W. H. Auden and Cecil Day Lewis, and published in Oxford Poetry. After graduating in 1928, he spent time teaching, some of it in Egypt. His first collection, Poems, appeared in 1937.

From 1945 to 1947 he was in Athens as Director of the British Institute. At that time he was involved in numerous translations of classical Greek authors. He also translated George Seferis (Poems of George Seferis,1960).

Later he was Tallman Professor of Classics at Bowdoin College (1961) and then professor at the University of Connecticut from 1962 for eleven years. He died in Wallingford, Oxfordshire.

Works

• The Wild Goose Chase (1936) novel
• Poems (1937)
• The Professor (1938) novel
• The Aerodrome (1941) novel
• Why Was I Killed? (1943) novel
• Poems and Contradictions (1945)
• Greeks and Trojans (1951)
• Views of Attica (1951)
• Eternal Greece (1953) with Martin Hürlimann
• Young Caesar (1958) historical novel
• The Greek Philosophers (1958)
• Imperial Caesar
• Pericles the Athenian
• The Converts