Albert Harkness

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Albert Harkness (1822-1907) was an American classical scholar and educator, born at Mendon, Mass. He graduated at Brown University in 1842, was senior master of the Providence High School from 1846 to 1853, pursued studies in Germany at the universities of Berlin, Bonn, and Göttingen, and was the first American to obtain a degree from Bonn (Ph.D., 1854). In 1855 he was appointed professor of Greek in Brown University. He visited Europe in 1870 and 1883 and there investigated educational questions, in particular the methods of German and English universities. He assisted in founding the American Philological Association, of which he was a first vice president in 1869-70 and president in 1875-76. As a member of the Archæological Institute of America, he was appointed in 1881 to the committee on the expediency of establishing an American School of Classical Studies at Athens, an institution which was opened in 1882. In 1884 he was elected director of the school. He lectured extensively before learned societies, contributed valuable papers on original researches in philology to the Transactions of the American Philological Association, and from 1851 published a series of textbooks in Latin studies, of which it may be said that from them dated the beginning of a new era in the Latin department of classical studies in America. The volumes include:

  • First Latin Book (1851)
  • Second Latin Book and Reader (1853)
  • a Latin Reader (1865)
  • Introduction to Latin Composition (1868, 1888)
  • annotated editions of Cæsar's De Bello Gallico (1870, 1886)
  • select orations of Cicero (1973, 1882)
  • Sallust's Catilina (1878, 1884)
  • an annotated Course in Latin Prose Authors (1878)
  • a standard Latin Grammar (1864, 1881), published in a thorough revision with many additions as A Complete Latin Grammar (1898)

Professor Harkness received the degree of LL.D. from Brown University in 1869.