Born 23 October 1831 in Charleston, S.C., Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve became the most renowned American classicist of the late 19th century. Founder of the American Journal of Philology in 1880, Gildersleeve taught classics at Johns Hopkins for almost four decades and became a central figure in the professionalization of Greek and Latin studies in the American university.

Gildersleeve grew up in a home of pronounced southern loyalties. His father, Benjamin, was a northerner by birth but adopted the southern antebellum sectional cause with enthusiasm. A Presbyterian minister and editor of a denominational paper, Benjamin Gildersleeve supervised his son's early education and introduced him, somewhat unsystematically, to the classics. Basil Gildersleeve went on to attend the College of Charleston, Jefferson College in Pennsylvania, and Princeton, where he graduated in 1849. He taught classics at a private academy in Richmond, Va., and then spent 1850 to 1853 in Germany at Berlin, Göttingen, and Bonn, before taking his Ph.D. at Göttingen. After three years in Charleston writing and teaching, he became a professor at the University of Virginia in 1856. Except for his service in the Confederate army, which left him with a crippling leg injury received in the Shenandoah Valley campaign, he remained at Virginia until he took a position at Johns Hopkins in 1876. He died 9 January 1924.

Links

• Find A Grave
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Sources

• Mohr, Clarence L., ed. The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. Ed. Charles Reagan Wilson. Vol. 17. U of North Carolina, 2011. Web.