Editing Joshua Barnes

{{Short description|British classical scholar (1654–1712)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
{{Infobox person/Wikidata|fetchwikidata=ALL}}'''Joshua Barnes''' [[Fellow of the Royal Society|FRS]] (10 January 1654 – 3 August 1712), was an [[England|English]] [[scholar]]. His work ''[[Gerania (book)|Gerania; a New Discovery of a Little Sort of People, anciently discoursed of, called Pygmies]]'' (1675) was an [[Utopian and dystopian fiction|Utopian romance]].<ref name="LeTellier">LeTellier (1997), p. 186.</ref>

==Life and work==
Barnes was born in [[London]], the son of Edward Barnes, a merchant taylor. Educated at [[Christ's Hospital]] and [[Emmanuel College, Cambridge]], he was chosen in 1695 as [[Regius Professor of Greek (Cambridge)|Regius Professor of Greek]], a language which he wrote and spoke with facility.

One of his early publications was ''Gerania; a New Discovery of a Little Sort of People, anciently discoursed of, called Pygmies'' (1675), a whimsical sketch, to which [[Jonathan Swift|Swift]]'s ''Voyage to Lilliput'' may owe something. Among his other works is a ''History of that Most Victorious Monarch Edward III'' (1688), an epic of over 900 pages, which inserts elaborate speeches into the narrative. He also produced editions of [[Euripides]] (1694), [[Homer]] (1711), and [[Anacreon (poet)|Anacreon]] (1705), of which the last contains titles of Greek verses of his own, which he hoped to publish. He was elected a [[Fellow of the Royal Society]] in November, 1710.<ref>{{Cite web| url= http://www2.royalsociety.org/DServe/dserve.exe?dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqCmd=Show.tcl&dsqDb=Persons&dsqPos=2&dsqSearch=%28Surname%3D%27barnes%27%29| title=Library and Archive Catalogue| accessdate=10 December 2010}}{{dead link|date=March 2018 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes}}</ref>

Barnes married a widow named Mrs Mafon in 1700.<ref name=":0">{{Citation |chapter=Surtees, Robert (1779–1834) |date=2018-02-06 |publisher=Oxford University Press |doi=10.1093/odnb/9780192683120.013.26790 |title=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography }}</ref> Barnes died on 3 August 1712 at [[Hemingford Grey|Hemingford]], near [[St Ives, Huntingdonshire]] where his widow erected a monument to him.<ref name=":0"/>

==Fiction writer==
The present-day scholar Robert Ignatius Letellier considers ''Gerania'', a work of prose fiction, to have been part of an emerging type of [[Adventure fiction|adventure novels]], featuring an "imaginary voyage into alien or fictional regions". These combined first-person adventure narratives with either "satirical social observation" or perceptions of ideal human behaviour in remote lands, following a tradition rooted in the ''[[Utopia (More book)|Utopia]]'' (1516) of [[Thomas More]], which found prominent manifestations in ''[[The Blazing World]]'' (1666) of [[Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne]] and ''[[The Isle of Pines]]'' of [[Henry Neville (writer)|Henry Neville]]. The tradition would lead to later works, such as the ''[[Robinson Crusoe]]'' (1719) of [[Daniel Defoe]].<ref name="LeTellier2">LeTellier (1997), Introduction p. xxxiii (33).</ref>

==References==
{{reflist|30em}}
*{{Cite EB1911 |wstitle=Barnes, Joshua}}

==Sources==
*{{Citation |last=Letellier |first=Robert Ignatius |title=The English Novel, 1660-1700: An Annotated Bibliography |year=1997 |publisher=[[Greenwood Publishing Group]] |isbn=978-0313303685 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=b9Vln1Irj-QC}}

==External links==
*{{acad|id=BNS671J|name=Barnes, Joshua}}

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[[Category:1654 births]]
[[Category:1712 deaths]]
[[Category:English classical scholars]]
[[Category:Scholars of ancient Greek literature]]
[[Category:English male novelists]]
[[Category:17th-century English novelists]]
[[Category:17th-century English male writers]]
[[Category:17th-century English writers]]
[[Category:17th-century English historians]]
[[Category:People educated at Christ's Hospital]]
[[Category:Alumni of Emmanuel College, Cambridge]]
[[Category:Fellows of the Royal Society]]
[[Category:Regius Professors of Greek (Cambridge)]]
[[Category:Academics from London]]
[[Category:People from Hemingford Grey]]
[[Category:English male non-fiction writers]]