Rate My Professor Rex Warner

Rex Warner (1905-1986) was a distinguished author, translator, and professor of English at the University of Connecticut, where he served from 1964 to 1974 in roles including University Professor of English and Special University Professor. Born on 9 March 1905 in Birmingham, England, to Frederick Ernest Warner, a clergyman, and Kathleen Warner, he received his education at St. George's School, Harpenden, and Wadham College, Oxford, earning a B.A. in 1928 and M.A. in 1933, with a first-class honors in Classical Moderations in 1925. Warner's early career encompassed teaching positions at the University of Liverpool as assistant lecturer in classics (1931-1932), Merchant Taylors' School as modern languages master (1932-1935), and the University of London as lecturer in Greek (1935-1937). From 1937 to 1945, he was Director of the British Institute in Athens and Professor of Greek at the National University of Athens. During World War II, he served in the Royal Air Force as a Flight Lieutenant. Postwar, he was Principal of the Department of English at the Ionian University, Corfu (1945-1947), before moving to the United States as Tallman Professor of Classics at Bowdoin College (1961-1962).

At the University of Connecticut's English department, Warner was granted sabbatical leaves, including full pay for the first semester of 1969-1970 to conduct research in Europe and writing, and leave without pay for the fall semester of 1972-1973. He retired effective October 1, 1974, with special leave at full pay. A prolific writer, Warner published novels such as The Professor (1938), The Aerodrome (1941), Why Was I Killed? (1943), Young Caesar (1958), Imperial Caesar (1960), which received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction, and Pericles the Athenian (1963). His acclaimed translations include Euripides' Medea (1944), Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound (1947), Xenophon's Anabasis as The Persian Expedition (1949), Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War (1954), Euripides' Hippolytus (1958), and Plutarch's Fall of the Roman Republic (1958). Other works encompass non-fiction like The Greek Philosophers (1958) and Men of Athens (1972), as well as poetry collections including Poems (1937) and Poems and Contradictions (1945). Warner's personal papers are preserved in the Archives & Special Collections at the University of Connecticut Libraries.