John Bagnell Bury (1861-1927) was an Irish historian, classical scholar and philologist. He was Erasmus Smith's Professor of Modern History at Trinity College, Dublin from 1893-1902 before being Regis Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University from 1902 until his death. Bury's writings, on subjects ranging from ancient Greece to the 19th century papacy, are at once scholarly and accessible to the layman. His two works on the philosophy of history, A History of Freedom of Thought (1913) and The Idea of Progress: An Inquiry into its Origin and Growth (1920), elucidated the Victorian ideals of progress and rationality which undergirded his more specific histories. Bury's career shows his evolving thought process and his consideration of the discipline of history as a 'science' and not a branch of 'literature'.