A. J. Boyle was born in 1942 in Warrington, England, and was educated at St. Benedict's Primary School Warrington, St. Francis Xavier's College Liverpool, Manchester University, and Downing College Cambridge. After a brief spell as a Bye-Fellow of Downing College, he took up a faculty position at Monash University in Melbourne Australia, where he taught for twenty years. He became Professor of Classics at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles at the beginning of 1989 and remains so today. In Australia he co-founded the international literary journal Ramus, which he still edits in its 51st year.