Warner, Rex

▪ British writer

born March 9, 1905, Birmingham, Warwickshire, Eng.

died June 24, 1986, Wallingford, Oxfordshire

      British novelist, Greek scholar, poet, translator, and critic who in his fictional work warned—in nightmarish allegory—against the evils of a capitalist society.

      After graduating from Wadham College, Oxford (1928), Warner was a schoolteacher in England and Egypt. In the 1940s he served as director of the British Institute in Athens. He moved to the United States in 1961 and was professor of English at the University of Connecticut from 1964 to 1974.

      Warner wrote only one book of poetry, Poems (1937). His translations from the Greek—particularly Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound (1947), Xenophon's Anabasis (1949), and Euripides' Hippolytus (1950) and Helen (1951)—are elegant, clear, and direct. Most notable of Warner's novels are The Professor (1938) and The Aerodrome (1941).

      Warner also wrote two fictionalized “autobiographies” of Julius Caesar: The Young Caesar (1958) and Imperial Caesar (1960). Other works of historical fiction include Pericles the Athenian (1963) and The Converts (1967). Men of Athens (1972) is a series of essays on the great Athenians of the 5th century BC.

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