Gilbert Sykes Blakely

Gilbert Sykes Blakely was an American educator and writer active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Library of Congress records identify him as born around 1865 and dying in 1925, and his books show a strong focus on English teaching, school editions, and literary study.

He is especially associated with Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English (1908), a guide built around college-admission expectations and classroom use. Records from the Online Books Page and the Library of Congress also connect him with editions or adaptations of works by writers such as Shakespeare, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Washington Irving, suggesting a career centered on helping students approach major English-language texts.

Available biographical records also indicate that he studied at Dartmouth and later took a master's degree at Harvard, and that he worked in public education, including service as a high-school principal. Even from the limited surviving information, Blakely comes across as a hands-on literary teacher: less interested in literary celebrity than in giving readers and instructors clear ways into the books they were studying.