Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie

Kenneth Robert Henderson Mackenzie (31 October 1833 – 3 July 1886) was an English linguist, orientalist, autodidact and member of the S.R.I.A.

Early life

Mackenzie was born on 31 October 1833 at Deptford near London, England. The following year, his family lived in Vienna, where his father, Dr. Rowland Hill Mackenzie, was assistant surgeon in the midwifery department at Imperial Hospital. When Dr. Mackenzie and his wife returned to England around 1840, Kenneth remained in Vienna for his education, excelling in languages (German, French, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew). At 17, he was back in London, where he worked in the publishing office of Benjamin Disraeli.

Literary career

In 1851, when Mackenzie was just 18, his short introductory biography of Homer, a translation of a text by Herodotus, appeared in Theodore Alois Buckley’s The Odyssey of Homer, with the Hymns, Epigrams, and Battles of the Frogs and Mice. Literally Translated, with Explanatory Notes (London: Henry Bohn). At the beginning of the book, Buckley thanked Mackenzie for his Life of Homer: Attributed to Herodotus, writing, For the translation of the Pseudo-Herodotean Life of Homer, the reader is indebted to the industry of Kenneth Mackenzie, Esq. It is the earliest memoir of the supposed author of the Iliad we possess. ("Care and an excellent education seconding the happy talents with which nature had endowed him, [he] soon surpassed his school fellows in every attainment," Mackenzie wrote of the young Homer. "[W]hen older, he... taught in the school of Phemius, where every one applauded him.")