{{Short description|British historian of classical scholarship}} {{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}} thumb|Christopher Stray '''Christopher Allan Stray'''<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.ias.edu/scholars/christopher-allan-stray|title = Christopher Allan Stray - Scholars | Institute for Advanced Study|date = 9 December 2019}}</ref><ref>The Cambridge University List of Members up to December 1991, Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 1304</ref> (born 29 October 1943) is a British retired teacher and academic, specialising in classical reception as a historian of classical scholarship and teaching.
==Early life and education== Born at Norwich, son of Peter Stray and Margaret (née Beard),<ref>Contemporary Authors, Gale Research Company, 1994, p. 432</ref> Stray read Classics at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, taking a BA in 1966 and MA in 1985. He worked as a classics teacher, including at Latymer Upper School, West London, and was a member of the JACT Ancient History Committee in the late 1960s, under the chairmanship of Sir Moses Finley.<ref>M. I. Finley- An Ancient Historian and his Impact, Daniel Jew, Robin Osborne, and Michael Scott, Cambridge University Press, 2016, pp. 141, 145</ref><ref>The Cambridge University List of Members up to December 1991, Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 1304</ref>
==Career== His academic writings began with his PhD thesis (1994, University College, Swansea) on the history of classical education in England, which was published as ''Classics Transformed: Schools, Universities and Society in England, 1830-1960'' (Oxford University Press, 1998 {{ISBN|9780198150138}}). The book was awarded a Runciman Prize in 1999.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://runcimanaward.org/previous-winners/|title=Runciman Award: Previous Winners}}</ref> Stray has also worked on the history of universities,<ref>{{Cite journal|date=November 1998|title=Unseen university. Remembering and forgetting Cambridge|journal=Cambridge Review|volume=2331|pages=1–8}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|title=An American in Victorian Cambridge: Charles Astor Bristed's Five Years in an English University (1852)|editor-last=Stray|editor-first=Christopher|publisher=University of Exeter Press|year=2008|isbn=9780859898256|location=Exeter / Chicago}}</ref> on examinations,<ref>{{Cite journal|date=2005|title=From oral to written examination: Oxford, Cambridge and Dublin 1700-1914|journal=History of Universities|volume=20|issue=2|pages=76–130}}</ref> and on institutional slang.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Mushri-English Pronouncing Dictionary. A Chapter in 19th- century Public-School Lexicography|last=Stray|first=Christopher|year=1996|isbn=9780704907744|location=Reading}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Stray|first=Christopher|date=2003|title=Mrs Gladstone's drawers: language and identity in Victorian families|journal=Australasian Victorian Studies Journal|volume=9|pages=1–16}}</ref>
Despite never holding a salaried academic post, Stray has held numerous visiting and honorary positions including: an honorary research fellowship in the Department of History and Classics, Swansea University (from 1989);<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.swansea.ac.uk/staff/arts-and-humanities/academic/straychristopher/|title=Christopher Stray}}</ref> visiting fellow at Wolfson College, Cambridge (1996–1998); John D and Rose H Jackson Fellowship at the Beinecke Library, Yale University (2005);<ref>{{Cite journal|title=The Yale University Library Gazette|url=https://brbl-apps08.library.yale.edu/programs-events/visiting-fellow/christopher-stra|journal=The Yale University Library Gazette|volume=80|pages=84}}</ref> senior research fellow at the Institute of Classical Studies, University of London (2010–2018); member of the School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (2012);<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.hs.ias.edu/memberlists/2011-2012|title=Members of the Institute of Advanced Study|date=5 July 2011}}</ref> and visiting fellow commoner, Trinity College, Cambridge (Michaelmas Term 2024).<ref>Trinity College, Annual Record 2024, available at https://issuu.com/trinityalumni/docs/annual_record_2024</ref>
He has also been active in collaborative research projects, and in the organisation of conferences and colloquia, including: Convener of the Textbook Colloquium (1988–99); co-organiser (with Stephen Harrison and Chris Kraus) of conference on "Classical Commentaries" (Oxford, 2012); member of advisory board, "Classics and Class in Britain", King's College London, 2013–16 (from 2016 "People’s History of Classics");<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.classicsandclass.info/stray/|title=A People's History of Classics}}</ref> co-organiser (with Stephen Harrison) of conference on "Liddell & Scott" (Oxford, 2013).<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.ccc.ox.ac.uk/Liddell-and-Scott/|title=Liddell and Scott Colloquium}}</ref> A colloquium in his honour was held in Oxford in October 2018, organised by Stephen Harrison.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://classicalreception.org/event/classics-and-classicists-a-colloquium-in-honour-of-christopher-stray/|title=Colloquium in Honour of Christopher Stray|date=6 September 2018}}</ref>
A ''Festschrift'' was published in his honour in 2021: ''Classical Scholarship and Its History From the Renaissance to the Present. Essays in Honour of Christopher Stray'', edited by Stephen Harrison and Christopher Pelling.<ref>{{cite book |editor1-last=Harrison |editor1-first=Stephen |editor2-last=Pelling |editor1-link= Stephen Harrison (classicist) |editor2-first=Christopher |editor2-link= Christopher Pelling |title=Classical scholarship and its history: from the Renaissance to the present: essays in honour of Christopher Stray |date=2021 |publisher=De Gruyter |location=Berlin |isbn=978-3110718171}}</ref> In 2024, he was awarded the Kenyon Medal by the British Academy "for almost single-handedly creating the field of the institutional history of Classics."<ref>{{cite web |title=The British Academy Kenyon Medal |url=https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/prizes-medals/kenyon-medal/ |website=The British Academy |access-date=15 February 2026 |language=en}}</ref>
==Personal life== Stray married anthropologist Margaret Kenna, of Swansea University; they have a son.<ref>Contemporary Authors, Gale Research Company, 1994, p. 432</ref><ref>Embodiments: The Social Construction of Gender in Dance-events in a Northern Greek Town, Jane K. Cowan, Indiana University, 1990, acknowledgements</ref>
==Works== ===Books=== *''The Living Word: W. H. D. Rouse and the Crisis of Classics in Edwardian England'' (Bristol Classical Press, London 1992) {{ISBN|9781853992629}} *''Classics Transformed: Schools, Universities and Society in England, 1830-1960'' (Oxford University Press, 1998) {{ISBN|9780198150138}} *''Classics in Britain, 1800-2000'' (Clarendon Press, 2018) {{ISBN|9780199569373}}
===As editor=== *''The Classical Association:'' ''The First Century 1903–2003'' (Classical Association, 2003) {{ISBN|9780198528746}} *''Classics in 19th and 20th Century Cambridge: Curriculum, Culture and Community'' (Cambridge Philological Society, 2005; ''Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society'', Supplement 24) {{ISBN|0906014239}} *''The Owl of Minerva. The Cambridge praelections of 1906. Reassessments of Richard Jebb, James Adam, Walter Headlam, Henry Jackson, William Ridgeway and Arthur Verrall'' (Cambridge Philological Society, 2005; ''Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society'', Supplement 28 {{ISBN|0906014271}} *''Remaking the Classics. Literature, genre and media in Britain (1800–2000)'' (Duckworth, 2007) {{ISBN|9780715636732}} *''Gilbert Murray Reassessed. Hellenism, Theatre, and International Politics'' (Oxford University Press, 2007) {{ISBN|9780199208791}} *''Oxford Classics: Teaching and Learning 1800–2000'' (Duckworth, 2007) {{ISBN|9780715636459}} *''Classical Books: Scholarship and Publishing in Britain Since 1800'' (Institute of Classical Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, 2007; ''Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, Supplement'' 101) {{ISBN|9781905670154}} *''Classical Dictionaries. Past, present and future'' (Duckworth, 2010) {{ISBN|9780715639160}} *''Sophocles’ Jebb: A Life in Letters'' (Cambridge Philological Society, 2013; ''Cambridge Classical Journal'' supplement, 38). *''Expurgating the Classics: Editing Out in Greek and Latin'' (Bristol Classical Press, London 2012) {{ISBN|9780956838131}} *With David Butterfield: ''A. E. Housman: Classical Scholar'' (Duckworth, 2009) {{ISBN|9780715638088}} *With Michael Clarke and Joshua Katz: ''Liddell and Scott: The History, Methodology, and Languages of the World's Leading Lexicon of Ancient Greek'' (Oxford University Press, 2019) {{ISBN|9780198810803}} *With Judith P. Hallett: ''British Classics Outside England – The Academy and Beyond'' (Baylor University Press, Waco, Texas, 2008) {{ISBN|9781602580121}} *With Lorna Hardwick: ''A Companion to Classical Receptions'' (Wiley, 2008) {{ISBN|9781405151672}} *With Chris Pelling and Stephen Harrison: ''Rediscovering E.R.Dodds:'' ''Scholarship, Poetry, and the Paranormal'' (Oxford University Press, 2019) {{ISBN|9780198777366}} *With Jonathan Smith: ''Cambridge in the 1830s. The Letters of Alexander Chisholm Gooden, 1831–1841'' (Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 2003) {{ISBN|9781843830108}} *With Jonathan Smith: ''Teaching and Learning in Nineteenth-century Cambridge'' (Boydell & Brewer, Woodbridge, 2001) {{ISBN|9780851157832}} *With Stephen Halliwell: ''Scholarship and Controversy: Centenary Essays on the Life and Work of Sir Kenneth Dover'' (Bloomsbury, 2023) {{ISBN|978-1350333451}}
===As contributor=== *''Classics in the curriculum up to the 1960s'' (in ''The Teaching of Classics'' ed. James Morwood, Cambridge University Press, 2003) {{ISBN|9780521527637}}
==References== {{Reflist}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Stray, Christopher}} Category:1943 births Category:Living people Category:Academics of Swansea University Category:Alumni of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge Category:British historians of education Category:Runciman Award winners Category:Classical reception studies