W. R. Johnson
Photographed in 1984
Born	(1933-07-09)July 9, 1933 Trinidad, Colorado, United States
Died	April 13, 2024(2024-04-13) (aged 90)
Academic background
Alma mater	University of California, Berkeley
Academic work
Discipline	Classical studies
Sub-discipline	Latin poetry
Institutions	University of California, Berkeley Cornell University University of Chicago
Notable works	Darkness Visible: A Study of Vergil's Aeneid (1976)

Walter Ralph Johnson (July 9, 1933 – April 13, 2024), commonly known as W. Ralph Johnson and published as W. R. Johnson, was an American classicist. He was the John Matthews Manly Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Classics at the University of Chicago from 1989 to 1998.

Born in Trinidad, Colorado, on July 9, 1933, Johnson studied at the University of California, Berkeley, graduating BA in 1961 and MA in 1963 before completing his PhD there in 1967. He taught at Berkeley from 1966 to 1974, then Cornell University until 1981. He was then professor of classical languages and literatures at the University of Chicago from 1981 to 1988; ^[1] in 1989, he became the John Matthews Manly Distinguished Service Professor at Chicago. ^[2] He retired in 1998, remaining an emeritus professor at Chicago until his death on April 13, 2024. ^[1]

• W. R. Johnson, Luxuriance and Economy: Cicero and the Alien Style, University of California Publications in Classical Studies, 6 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971)
• W. R. Johnson, Darkness Visible: A Study of Vergil's Aeneid (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976)
• W. R. Johnson, Momentary Monsters: Lucan and His Heroes (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1987)
• W. R. Johnson, Horace and the Dialectic of Freedom: Readings in Epistles 1 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1993)
• W. R. Johnson, Lucretius and the Modern World (London: Duckworth, 2000)
• W. R. Johnson, A Latin Lover in Ancient Rome: Readings in Propertius and His Genre (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2009)