Robert Ornsby

Born in 1820 in County Durham, Robert Ornsby studied at Lincoln College, Oxford, and graduated with first-class honors in literae humaniores. He later became a fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, taught rhetoric, and worked as a private tutor.

After a period as a Church of England curate, he entered the Roman Catholic Church in May 1847. He then helped with The Tablet in Dublin and, when John Henry Newman founded the Catholic University of Ireland in 1854, accepted a post there as professor of Greek and Latin literature.

Ornsby later served as tutor to members of the Norfolk family, worked briefly as librarian at Arundel Castle, and returned to the Catholic University in 1874. He died in Dublin on April 21, 1889. His best-known books include The Life of St. Francis de Sales, a Greek Testament edition with notes, and the two-volume Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott.