Our Programme
All meetings will take place in Room G35, South Block, Senate House, Malet Street, London (and online, see below). The Society thanks the Institute of Classical Studies, University of London, and the Department of Greek and Latin, University College London, for their continued support.
Those wishing to attend our online meetings are asked to fill out a request form. Click below to access the form. A Zoom link will then be sent out a short time before the talk. This is a new registration procedure.
Our Programme 2024 – 2025
Saturday 5 October 2024, 2:30 p.m. (G35)
Prof. David Scourfield (Maynooth University)
‘E.M. Forster’s Virgil’
Saturday 30 November 2024, 2:30 p.m. (Senate Room)
Dr Nicoletta Bruno (University of Basel / University of Liverpool)
‘Prophecies and Archaeologies of Rome: The Aeneid and Cicero’s De Re Publica’
Saturday 18 January 2025, 2:30 p.m. (G35)
Alice Bolland (University College London / South Hampstead High School)
‘The Arcadian palimpsest: layers of reception in Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia’
Saturday 8 March 2025, 2:30 p.m. (G35)
Dr Nicolas Liney (Balliol College, Oxford)
‘Quintilian’s Virgil: poet, orator, hero’
Saturday 10 May 2025, 11:00-4:30 p.m. (G35)
The day will include AGM (2:30-3:00) and talks by Dr. Talitha Kearey (University of St Andrews) at 11am and by William Fitzgerald who will give his Presidential Address at 3pm. Details will appear in the May Newsletter and here once finalised.
How to Join the Society
The best way to join is to come to a meeting and ask Jill Kilsby, the membership secretary, for an application form.
Membership costs 15 GBP per year and this entitles members to the twice-a-year newsletter and a copy of the Proceedings of the Virgil Society, which is normally published every three years.
The Society is a registered charity.
You may also wish to join our meetings online. Click below to register your interest.
About Us
The Virgil Society was founded in 1943, and its first President, the poet T.S. Eliot, delivered What is a Classic? as his Presidential Address in the following year. The purpose of the Society was and remains to unite all those who cherish the central educational tradition of Western Europe. Of that tradition Virgil is the symbol. Membership is open to all those who are in sympathy, whether they read Latin or not.
There are normally five or six meetings each year in London, held on Saturday afternoons in Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU.
The speakers include both amateur and professional scholars, many of them Virgilians of international repute. Lectures are followed by refreshments, giving an opportunity to meet the speaker and other members of the Society.
Most lectures are published in full in the Proceedings of the Virgil Society. There is also a Members’ Newsletter, which appears twice a year.
President 2023-2026
William Fitzgerald
Vice-Presidents
Egil Kraggerud
A.C. Dionisotti
Richard Jenkyns
Philip Hardie
Treasurer and Membership Secretary
Jill Kilsby
Meetings Secretaries (alternate years)
Bruce Gibson
Editor of Proceedings
Luke Houghton
Editor of the Newsletter
Naoko Yamagata
Student Representative and Schools Liaison
Alice Bolland
Council of the Society
A. Bolland, A.C. Dionisotti, B. Gibson, L. Houghton, M. Hughes, J. Kilsby, F. Mac Góráin, Bobby Xinyue, N. Yamagata
Webmaster
Cristian Ispir
Proceedings of the Virgil Society
All issues of the Proceedings of the Virgil Society are now available online, except the most recent issue, PVS 30.
Click below to access the resources:
For enquiries about Proceedings, please contact the editor, Luke Houghton
Other Sites of Interest
www.thelatinlibrary.com/verg.html
Texts of Virgil from The Latin Library
www.virgil.org
David Wilson-Okamura’s bibliography of the Virgilian tradition
www.vergil.clarku.edu.bibliog1.htm
Niklas Holzberg’s comprehensive Aeneid bibliography
ics.sas.ac.uk
The Institute of Classical Studies is a national and international research institute in the languages, literature, history, art, archaeology and philosophy of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. It is a member institute of the University of London’s School of Advanced Study.
vergil.classics.upenn.edu/vergil/index.php/
The Vergil Project is a resource for students, teachers, and readers of Vergil’s Aeneid. It offers an on-line hypertext linked to interpretive materials of various kinds. These include basic information about grammar, syntax, and diction; several commentaries; an apparatus criticus; help with scansion; and other resources.
Aeneid in JSTOR
A tool to find articles in JSTOR that quote or refer to specific passages of the Aeneid
Pentakontaetia
A history of the first 50 years of the Virgil Society, published in 1993 by the late Dennis Blandford.