Edward Ross Wharton

Edward Ross Wharton (1844–1896) was an English academic, known as classical scholar and genealogist. He was born in Wales.

Life

Born at Rhyl, Flintshire on 4 August 1844, he was second son of Henry James Wharton, vicar of Mitcham; his mother was a daughter of Thomas Peregrine Courtenay, and a younger brother, Henry Thornton Wharton (1846–1895) was a medical man known as an ornithologist and for an edition of Sappho. He was educated as a day-boy at Charterhouse School under Richard Elwyn, and was elected to a scholarship at Trinity College, Oxford, in 1862, graduating B.A. in 1868 and M.A. in 1870. Despite poor health and eyesight, in his second year he won the Ireland scholarship. He was placed in the first class in classical moderations, and also in the final classical school.

In 1868 Wharton was elected to a fellowship at Jesus College, where he was assistant tutor and Latin lecturer. He died at Oxford on 4 June 1896, and his remains were cremated at Woking.

Works

Wharton published:

• Etyma Græca (1882), an etymological lexicon of classical Greek (1882); and
• Etyma Latina (1890).
• Translations of Aristotle's Poetics and Book i. of Horace's Satires.

He contributed papers to the London Philological Society and to the French Société Linguistique.

Six manuscript volumes left to the Bodleian Library were genealogical researches on the family names Wharton or Warton; including the baronial family of Wharton of Wharton Hall now in Cumbria. A sketch of this family which he finished just before his death was printed by his widow (1898).

Family

In 1870 Wharton married Marie, daughter of Samuel Hicks Withers of Willesden, who died in 1899. They had no children.