Peter Elmsley

Peter Elmsley (* 1773 in Hampstead, † March 8, 1825 in Oxford ) was a British classical scholar and church historian.

His uncle was a well-known bookseller and his namesake. Elmsley attended Westminster School and studied classical philology at Christ Church College in Oxford. 1794 was followed by the Bachelor and the Master's degree in 1797. After graduating, he spent the next years of life, first in Edinburgh and from 1807 to 1816 in Kent. 1797, the spiritual consecration and the Benefiziat in Great Horkesley. In 1814 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society. For some years he held from 1816 in Italy and France. There he evaluated various manuscripts to Sophocles for one edition. In 1819 he assisted Humphry Davy in Naples, the work on the papyri from Herculaneum. In 1822 it was decided despite high professional reputation against Elmsley for the time-honored Regius Chair of Ecclesiastical History (Department of Church History ), Oxford. In 1823 he was appointed rector of St. Alban Hall, and as Camden Professor of Ancient History at Oxford University, both offices he could exercise only two years until his death in 1825.

His research focus was to Sophocles and Euripides editions. As the first philologist, he evaluated in 1818 in the Laurentian Library in Florence the local handwriting with tragedies of Sophocles from (Codex Laurentianus 32, 9). He also worked for the Edinburgh Review. Elmsley cultivated ties scholarly exchange with Richard Porson, Robert Southey and other intellectuals. However, for his edition, he is said to have taken over text corrections of Porson, without having it identified. In an anonymous article in the Church of England Quarteley Review of 1839 allegations of plagiarism against him were raised.