Books by John Sparrow

Mr Sparrow traces the development of the inscription as a literary form in Renaissance and post-Renaissance Europe. He attributes the Renaissance concern with the visual presentation of words to the profound interest in epigraphy aroused by the rediscovery of classical inscriptions.

Mark Pattison was Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford, from 1861 to 1884, and a rival of Jowett in the promotion of university reform. His strongly marked personality served as a model for several characters in Victorian fiction, including Mr Casaubon in George Eliot's Middlemarch.