John William MackailOMFBA (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 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 CarsonFRSE, 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.
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 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]
Biblia Innocentium: Being the Story of God's Chosen People Before the Coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ Upon Earth, Written Anew for Children (Kelmscott Press, 1892)
The Study of Poetry (1915) inauguration of the Rice Institute
"Shakespeare after Three Hundred Years". Proceedings of the British Academy, 1915–1916. 7: 319–338. 1976. Annual Shakespeare Lecture of the British Academy (1916)
Penelope in the Odyssey (1916)
Pope (1919) Leslie Stephen Lecture, University of Cambridge 10 May 1919
The Hundred Best Poems (lyrical) (1920)
Virgil and His Meaning to the World of To-day (1922)
Shakespeare (1923) Inaugural Address to the Australian English Association
Bentley's Milton (1924) British Academy Warton Lecture
The Pilgrim's Progress (1924) Royal Institution Lecture 14 March 1924
Life and Letters of George Wyndham (2 vols.) (1924) with Guy Wyndham
Classical Studies (1925)
James Leigh Strachan-Davidson, Master of Balliol. A Memoir (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925)
Studies of English Poets (1926)
Largeness in Literature (1930)
The Approach to Shakespeare (1930)
Coleridge's Literary Criticism (1931)
Virgil (1931) Henriette Hertz Trust Lecture of the British Academy.
The Odyssey (1932)
Virgil's Work: The Aeneid, Eclogues, Georgics (1934)
Studies in Humanism (1938)
Poems by Bowyer Nichols (1943)
An Introduction to Virgil's Aeneid (1946)
Selections from the Georgics of Virgil (1948)
Latin Literature (1962) Harry C. Schnur editor
The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments (1897)
