Walter Leaf (1852–1927), banker, classicist and alpinist, held various positions as chairman of the Westminster Bank, founder of the London Chamber of Commerce and president of the Hellenic Society, reflecting his wide-ranging professional and scholarly interests. Leaf was educated at Harrow School and Trinity College, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow in 1875. As a scholar, Leaf was concerned with uncovering the physical reality of the classical world, and in this 1912 work he 'aims at testing the tradition of the Trojan War by comparing the text of Homer with the natural conditions described, or more often implicitly assumed, in the Iliad'. This book draws on the archaeological work of Schliemann and Dörpfeld at Troy, but also on Leaf's own expert knowledge of the Iliad (of which his two-volume edition is also reissued in this series), thereby providing a thorough exploration of the historical geography of the Troad.
