W. Y. (William Young) Sellar

Born in Sutherland in 1825, William Young Sellar was educated at the Edinburgh Academy, the University of Glasgow, and Balliol College, Oxford. After teaching at Durham, Glasgow, and St Andrews, he became professor of humanity at the University of Edinburgh, a post he held for the rest of his life.

Sellar was best known as a classical scholar who wrote about Latin literature as living art rather than dry school material. His major works include The Roman Poets of the Republic and The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age, especially the volumes on Virgil and Horace, which helped make Roman poetry vivid and approachable for English-speaking readers.

He died in 1890, but his reputation lasted well beyond his own century. Readers still turn to him for learned but readable criticism, and for a style that brings both scholarship and genuine love of literature together.