Howard W. Clarke (June 12, 1929 â January 24, 2015) was an American classicist. He was a professor of classics and comparative literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB).
Clarke graduated from the College of the Holy Cross (A.B., 1950) and Harvard University (MA, 1951; PhD, 1960). He was a Teaching Fellow at Harvard (1950âÂÂ51), a sergeant in the Army Security Agency in Berlin (1953âÂÂ56), Instructor in Classics, Boston University (1956âÂÂ1958, 1959âÂÂ1960); Assistant to Full Professor of Classics at Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, (1960âÂÂ1969); and Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature UCSB (1969âÂÂ1991).
From 1993 he worked as a destination lecturer on cruise ships in the Mediterranean.
He died on 24 January 2015 following a brief illness.
Clarke was the author of The Gospel of Matthew and Its Readers: A Historical Introduction to the First Gospel (Bloomington, Ind. : Indiana University Press, c2003). He has also authored The Art of the Odyssey (Prentice-Hall, 1967; rpt. Duckworth, 19940); Homer's Readers: A Historical Introduction to the Iliad and the Odyssey (University of Delaware Press, 1981), he has translated from the Polish The Return of Odysseus by Stanisà Âaw Wyspiaà Âski (Indiana University Press, 1966); and he has edited Twentieth Century Interpretations of the Odyssey (Prentice-Hall, 1983) and Vergil's Aeneid in the Dryden Translation (Penn State Press, 1987).