Anthony Grafton
Anthony Thomas Grafton is an American historian of early modern Europe and the Henry Putnam University Professor of History at Princeton University, where he is also the Director of the Program in European Cultural Studies. He is also a corresponding fellow of the British Academy and a recipient of the Balzan Prize. From January 2011 to January 2012, he served as the President of the American Historical Association. From 2006 to 2020, Grafton was co-executive editor of the Journal of the History of Ideas.
Early life and education
Grafton was born on May 21, 1950, in New Haven, Connecticut. He was educated at Phillips Academy.He attended the University of Chicago, from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history in 1971 and a Master of Arts degree in 1972. He made Phi Beta Kappa in 1970, with honors in history and in the college. After studying at University College, London, under ancient historian Arnaldo Momigliano, from 1973 to 1974, he earned his Doctor of Philosophy degree in history from the University of Chicago in 1975. He still retains links with the University of London's Warburg Institute.
Grafton married Louise Erlich in 1972, and was married to her until her death in 2019. They had two children.
Career
After a brief period teaching at Cornell's history department, he was appointed to a position at Princeton University in 1975, where he has subsequently remained. In 2006, he became co-editor of the Journal of the History of Ideas, together with Warren Breckman, Martin Burke, and Ann Moyer.Works
Anthony Grafton is noted for his studies of the classical tradition from the Renaissance to the eighteenth century, and in the history of historical scholarship. His many books include a study of the scholarship and chronology of Renaissance scholar Joseph Scaliger, and, more recently, studies of Girolamo Cardano as an astrologer and Leon Battista Alberti. In 1996, he delivered the Triennial E. A. Lowe Lectures at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, speaking on Ancient History in Early Modern Europe. Together with Lisa Jardine, he also co-wrote a revisionist account of the significance of Renaissance education and on the marginalia of Gabriel Harvey.He also penned several essay collections, including Defenders of the Text, which deals with the relations between scholarship and science in the early modern period, and, most recently, Worlds Made by Words. His most original and accessible book is The Footnote: A Curious History, a case study of how the marginal footnote developed as a central and powerful tool in the hands of historians.
He also writes on a wide variety of topics for The New Republic, The American Scholar, and The New York Review of Books. He owns a bookwheel which he keeps at hand in his home.
Honors
- Los Angeles Times Book Prize, History, 1993
- Member of the American Philosophical Society, elected 1993
- Balzan Prize for History of the Humanities, 2002
- Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, elected 2002
- Fellow of The British Academy, elected 1997
- Honorary degree from Leiden University, 2006
- Honorary degree from University of Oxford, 2013
- The Sigmund H. Danziger, Jr. Memorial Lecture in the Humanities, University of Chicago, 2011
- Rome Prize
- Pour le Mérite
- Guggenheim Fellowship
- Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities
Selected publications
Articles
Books
- Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship, Oxford-Warburg Studies.
- with Lisa Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities. Education and the Liberal Arts in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Europe.
- Forgers and Critics. Creativity and Duplicity in Western Scholarship.
- Defenders of the Text: The Traditions of Scholarship in the Age of Science, 1450–1800.
- Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library and Renaissance Culture
- New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery.
- Commerce with the Classics: Ancient Books and Renaissance Readers.
- The Footnote: A Curious History.
- Cardano's Cosmos : The Worlds and Works of a Renaissance Astrologer.
- Leon Battista Alberti: Master Builder of the Italian Renaissance.
- Bring Out Your Dead: The Past as Revelation.
- What Was History?: The Art of History in Early Modern Europe.
- with Megan Hale Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book: Origen, Eusebius, and the Library of Caesarea.
- Codex in Crisis. Video:, February 12, 2009.
- with Brian A. Curran, Pamela O. Long, and Benjamin Weiss, Obelisk: A History.
- Worlds Made by Words. Review by Véronique Krings,
- , "I Have Always Loved the Holy Tongue": Isaac Casaubon, The Jews, and a Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship.
- Inky Fingers: The Making of Books in Early Modern Europe.
- with Maren Elisabeth Schwab, The Art of Discovery: Digging into the Past in Renaissance Europe.
- Magus: The Art of Magic in the Renaissance from Faustus to Agrippa.
Essays