John Urry (literary editor)

John Urry (1666, Dublin – 18 March 1715, Oxford) was a noted literary editor and medieval scholar of Scottish family.

Life

Matriculating from Christ Church, Oxford on June 30, 1682,citation
url=http://books.google.com/books?id=kicJAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA52&lpg=PA52&dq=%22john+urry%22+chaucer&source=web&ots=1LA8SrVb_N&sig=HDxISPszf1BOugZVPizioF8BEEI&hl=en
title=Dictionary of National Biography
editor-first=Sidney
editor-last=Lee
location=New York
publisher=The Macmillan Company
date=1899
page=52
volume=LVIII
accessdate=2008-04-25] he was elected to a studentship. He graduated B.A. in 1686. However (his father William was a major of the royal guards in Scotland at the Restoration, and his elder brother John fought on the Royalist side in the Civil War), the younger John Urry fought against Monmouth, and would not swear the oath of allegiance to William III on his accession, thereby losing his studentship.

At the end of 1711, Christ Church's dean Francis Atterbury convinced a reluctant Urry to edit a proposed new edition of the works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Though the work was incomplete on Urry's death 4 years later (he is buried at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford) and had to be completed and revised by Timothy and William Thomas, Urry's work on it - the first edition of Chaucer to be entirely in Roman type [ [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/28021?docPos=2 John Urry] on the Dictionary of National Biography (requires subscription)] – posthumously made his name.

Notes

External links

* [http://www.library.nd.edu/rarebooks/exhibits/fructus/middle_english/1721chaucer.htm "Middle English: 1721, The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer" Department of Special Collections University of Notre Dame]