John William Mackail Explained

John William Mackail
Birth Date:26 August 1859
Birth Place:Ascog, Bute, Scotland
Death Date:13 December 1945 (aged 86)
Death Place:London, England
Spouse:Margaret Burne-Jones
Children:3
Education:Ayr Academy
Discipline:Classics
Poetry

John William Mackail (26 August 1859 – 13 December 1945) was a Scottish academic of Oxford University and reformer of the British education system.

He is most often remembered as a scholar of Virgil and as the official biographer of the socialist artist William Morris, of whom he was a friend.

Mackail was Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1906 to 1911, and president of the British Academy from 1932 to 1936.

Life

Mackail was born in Ascog on Bute, the second child and only son of the Rev. John Mackail, of the Free Church, and Louisa Irving, who was the youngest daughter of Aglionby Ross Carson FRSE, who was the rector of Edinburgh High School.[1]

Academic career

He was educated at Ayr Academy; at Edinburgh University, from 1874 to 1877; and at Balliol College, Oxford, as Warner Exhibitioner, from 1877. At Oxford, he took first classes in classical moderations (1879) and literae humaniores ('Greats') in 1881, and he also obtained the Hertford (1880), Ireland (1880), Newdigate (1881), Craven (1882) and Derby (1884) Prizes.[1] He was elected to a Balliol fellowship in 1882.

At Oxford, Mackail contributed, alongside Cecil Spring Rice, to the composition of a famous sardonic doggerel about George Nathaniel Curzon, later Lord Curzon, their contemporary at Balliol, that was published in The Masque of Balliol.[2]

In 1884, Mackail accepted a post in the Education Department of the Privy Council (later the Board of Education), of which he became Assistant Secretary in 1903. In this position, made an important contribution to the system of secondary education established by the 1902 Education Act, and to the organisation of a system of voluntary inspection for the public schools. He retired from office in 1919.[1]

He was the official biographer of the socialist artist William Morris, of whom he was a close friend. He also published works on Virgil; the Latin poets; the Icelandic sagas; Shakespeare; and Jesus.

He was Oxford Professor of Poetry (1906–11), president of the British Academy (1932–36), and president of the Classical Association (1923–24). He was appointed to the Order of Merit in 1935.

Private life

He married Margaret Burne-Jones (1866–1953), who was the only daughter of artist and designer Edward Burne-Jones. They lived in Kensington, and later in Holland Park. He died in London and was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium on 17 December 1945.[3]

The couple's elder daughter, Angela Margaret, and their son, Denis George, are better known as the novelists Angela Thirkell and Denis Mackail. The couple also had a younger daughter, Clare Mackail, who was the subject of a 2020 biography Barely Clare: the Little-Known Life of Clare Mackail by Tim McGee.[4]

Works

See also

Further reading

Notes and References

  1. DNB, 1941–50, Oxford : OUP, 1959, p. 550
  2. Book: Mosley, Leonard. Curzon: The End of an Epoch. registration. Longmans, Green, and Co.. 1961. 26.
  3. [Wikisource:The Times/1945/News/Funeral of John William Mackail]
  4. Web site: Barely Clare. 31 August 2020.

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