Alfred Chilton Pearson

Alfred Chilton Pearson FBA
Chalk drawing of Pearson in the collection of Trinity College, Cambridge
Born	(1861-08-08)8 August 1861 23 Campden Hill Square, London
Died	2 January 1935(1935-01-02) (aged 73)
Occupations	Barrister Schoolteacher Classical scholar
Spouse	Edith Maud ​ ​ (m. 1885; died 1930)​
Academic background
Education	King's College School, Wimbledon Highgate School
Alma mater	Christ's College, Cambridge
Influences	John Peile
Academic work
Institutions	University of Liverpool Trinity College, Cambridge

Alfred Chilton Pearson FBA (8 October 1861 – 2 January 1935) was an English classical scholar, noted for his work on Greek tragedy. Born and schooled in London, Pearson graduated with distinction from Christ's College, Cambridge, before pursuing a career in law, business and teaching. In 1919, having published several books on ancient Greek philosophy and tragedy, he was elected as the Gladstone Professor of Greek at the University of Liverpool, and he subsequently became Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge in 1921.

Porson was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1924, the year in which he released his Oxford Classical Text of the works of the fifth-century tragedian Sophocles, but was forced to resign his academic post in 1928 by increasing ill-health. Following the death of his wife, Edith, in 1930, he moved successively to Hunstanton in Norfolk and to Kensington in London, where he died in 1935.

Life

Alfred Chilton Pearson was born at 23 Campden Hill Square, London, on 8 October 1861. He was the only child of the merchant Robert Henry Pearson and his wife Georgina, née Boswood. Georgina Pearson died during Alfred's childhood.

After education at King's College School and Highgate School, Pearson went up to Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1879. He read classics, and was taught by John Peile, from whom he learned Sanskrit. Pearson graduated with a double first in 1883, and married Edith Maud, the daughter of a solicitor, in 1885. The same year, he became a barrister at Lincoln's Inn in 1885, and practised law for five years. He then spent ten years as a schoolmaster, teaching in Bury St Edmunds, at Ipswich School and, from 1893, at Dulwich College in London. In 1900, following the death of his father, he moved to Warlingham in Surrey to take over the family business.

During this period, Pearson produced school editions of Greek tragedies, including some of the plays of Sophocles, culminating in 1917 with his magnum opus, an edition of the Fragments of Sophocles, a work left unfinished on his death by Richard Claverhouse Jebb. His first book, The Fragments of Zeno and Cleanthes, was awarded the Hare Prize at Cambridge in 1889 prior to its publication in 1891.

At the age of 58, and despite a life spent outside academia, Pearson was elected in 1919 as the Gladstone Professor of Greek at the University of Liverpool. He subsequently became in 1921 the Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Trinity College. In 1924, the year of his election as a Fellow of the British Academy, Pearson published his edition of the works of Sophocles in the Oxford Classical Texts series, which remained in print until superseded in 1990 by the edition of Hugh Lloyd-Jones and N. G. Wilson.

Pearson resigned his professorship in 1928 on the grounds of ill health. His wife, Edith, died in 1930: Pearson's biographer and successor as Regius Professor, Donald Struan Robertson, states that he remained in "total incapacity" from that year until his death. In 1932, Pearson moved to Hunstanton in Norfolk, in 1934, he moved again to 61 Queen's Gate, Kensington, where he died on 2 January 1935.

Pearson and his wife had a son and two daughters, one of whom died during Pearson's lifetime. He was a member of the National Liberal Club from the early 1900s, but had resigned his membership by 1923, saying that he expected to become "a crusted Tory" in his old age. An inscription in his honour in the chapel of Trinity College commemorates him as "an exemplar of the Porsonian method".

Publications

• The Fragments of Zeno and Cleanthes: With Introduction and Explanatory Notes, A. C. Pearson, ed., London: C. J. Clay and Sons and Cambridge University Press: 1891 (The Pitt Press Series).
• The Helena of Euripides, edited by A. C. Pearson, Cambridge University Press: 1903 (The Pitt Press Series)
• Euripides: The Heraclidae, edited by A. C. Pearson, Cambridge University Press: 1903 (The Pitt Press Series)
• Euripides: The Phoenissae, edited by A. C. Pearson, Cambridge University Press: 1909 (The Pitt Press Series)
• The Ajax of Sophocles, edited by A. C. Pearson based on the edition of R. C. Jebb, Cambridge University Press, 1912
• Fragments of Sophocles – Edited With Additional Notes From the Papers of Sir R. C. Jebb and W. G. Headlam, 3 volumes, Cambridge University Press, 1917
• Sophoclis Fabulae recognovit brevique adnotatione critica instruxit A.C. Pearson – Oxford Classical Text, Clarendon Press, 1924

Further reading

• Richards, George Chatterton (1935). "Alfred Chilton Pearson, 1861–1935" (PDF). Proceedings of the British Academy. 21: 449–463.