Denis Mackail

Denis George Mackail (3 June 1892 – 4 August 1971) was an English fiction writer. His work was popular in his time, but much of his work has been forgotten. However, Greenery Street, a 1925 novel of early married life in upper middle-class London, was republished in 2002. Biography Mackail was born in Kensington, London, on 3 June 1892, to John William Mackail and Margaret Burne-Jones, the daughter of the painter Edward Burne-Jones. He was the younger brother of Angela Thirkell. Educated at St Paul's School, Hammersmith, he went to Balliol College, Oxford, but failed to complete his degree through ill-health after two years. His first work was as a stage-set designer, notably for J. M. Barrie's The Adored One and George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion (1914). The outbreak of World War I interrupted a promising start in this. Mackail was not fit enough for active service, but took work in the War Office and the Board of Trade.