Simcox, George Augustus 1841-1905

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SIMCOX, George Augustus 1841-1905

PERSONAL:

Born 1841, in London, England; died near Belfast, Northern Ireland, c. September 3, 1905. Education: Attended Corpus Christi College, Oxford, England, beginning 1858; student of classical studies.

CAREER:

Poet, classical scholar and editor, c. 1867-1905.

WRITINGS:

Prometheus Unbound: A Tragedy, Smith, Elder (London, England), 1867.

Poems and Romances (verse), Strahan (London, England), 1869.

(Editor with brother, Reverend William Henry Simcox) The Orations of Demosthenes and Aeschines on the Crown, Clarendon (Oxford, England), 1872.

Recollections of a Rambler, Chapman & Hall (London, England), 1874.

A History of Latin Literature from Ennius to Boethius, 2 volumes, Harper (New York, NY), 1883.

(Contributor) The Poets and Poetry of the Nineteenth Century, edited by Alfred H. Miles, Dutton (New York, NY), 1906.

Contributor of essays to critical journals, including North British Review, Fortnightly, Nineteenth Century, and Academy.

SIDELIGHTS:

George Augustus Simcox was noted for his poetry, classical studies and essays on the likes of Ernest Renan, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Charles Kingsley, and Harriet Martineau, according to Byron Nelson in Dictionary of Literary Biography.

Nelson judged that Simcox's contributions as a classical scholar and editor eclipse his work in English verse. According to Nelson, Prometheus Unbound: A Tragedy; The Orations of Demosthenes and Aeschines on the Crown, and A History of Latin Literature from Ennius to Boethius reflect his classical tastes.

Simcox died mysteriously, according to a writer in London Times, who found it "most probable" that Simcox fell over the cliffs and into the sea at Ballycastle, Ireland, near Belfast.

According to Nelson, the Simcox poem "The Soldan's Daughter," which narrates the abduction of a sultan's daughter, is best known for its unconventional ending. Though he criticized the work for weaknesses, including redundancies, Nelson concluded that "The narrative is rescued from trite moralizing on the superiority of Christianity to paganism by the deft ironic twists of the poem's conclusion."