Peloponnesus

William George Clark (1821–78), the co-editor of the Cambridge Shakespeare (1863–6), was a classical as well as a literary scholar, and this engaging combination of travel narrative and serious archaeological and topographical research, published in 1858, was the result of an archaeological tour of the Peloponnese in 1856.

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William George Clark (1821–78) is probably best remembered as the co-editor (with W. Aldis Wright) of the Cambridge Shakespeare (1863–6; also reissued in this series). A fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, he was a classical and literary scholar and editor, but travelled widely in his vacations, and this work, first published in 1858, is an account of a tour of Greece undertaken in 1856 with W. H. Thompson (1810–86), who later succeeded William Whewell as Master of Trinity. Clark's plan was to visit the archaeological sites of the Peloponnese using W. M. Leake's various surveys as a guide and comparing Leake's observations and his own with those of the ancient traveller Pausanias. The result is an engaging combination of travel narrative and serious archaeological and topographical research backed up by a profound knowledge of classical literature. It remains an interesting resource for those studying the history of Greek archaeology.