William Walter Merry

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William Walter Merry (1835-1918) was an English classical scholar, clergyman, and educator. He was born in Worcestershire and was educated at Cheltenham College and Balliol College, Oxford, where he gained the chancellor's prize for a Latin essay in 1858. He was select preacher to the university in 1878-79 and in 1889-90, and Whitehall preacher in 1883-84; public orator at Oxford from 1880 to 1910; a member of the Hebdomadal Council (1896-1908); and vice chancellor (1904-05). For many years he was engaged in the preparation of editions of the classical authors, published by the Clarendon Press, Oxford. Of these may be mentioned Homer's Odyssey (books i to xii, with James Riddell; second edition, 1886); a school edition of the same books and another of books xiii to xxiv — of the former 66,000 copies were sold, of the latter 16,000; a series of editions of the plays of Aristophanes, begun in 1879. (Some of these have gone through several editions). Other works in classical literature are The Greek Dialects (1875) and Selected Fragments of Roman Poetry (second edition, 1901).