Background

Mack Maynard was born in 1909 in Hillsdale, Michigan. He was the son of an English professor at Hillsdale and Oberlin colleges.

Education

Mack received his bachelor’s degree from Yale in 1932 and his doctorate, also from Yale, in 1936. He was president of Yale’s Phi Beta Kappa chapter, editor of the Yale Literary Magazine and Harkness Hoot, and was Class Poet. As a student, he won numerous awards: the Winston Trowbridge Townsend Prize, the C. Wyllys Betts Prize, the Masefield Poetry Prize, the Andrew D. White Prize, and several others.

Career

Maynard Mack joined the Yale faculty as an instructor in English in 1936 and moved steadily through the ranks, becoming a full professor in 1948. He was named Sterling Professor in 1965. During the 1960s, he served as chair of the English department and director of the Humanities division of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Mack taught at Yale for 45 years before his retirement in 1978 and was a world-renowned expert in Shakespeare, Alexander Pope and twentieth-century literary criticism. In January of 1996, an anonymous donor honored Mack by endowing an English department professorship in his name.

As an editor, Mack made major contributions to the field. One of his chief accomplishments is The Twickenham Edition of the poems of Alexander Pope, which has become the standard edition of the poet. In addition, Mack had edited collections of contemporary critical essays on major authors and works: Twentieth Century Views, 143 volumes; Twentieth Century Interpretations, 97 volumes; and New Century Views, 17 volumes.

Throughout his career, Mack was active in professional organizations including the Yale Shakespeare Institute, the Modern Language Association, serving as president in 1970; the Commission of Faculty Affairs of the American Council on Education, the Shakespeare Association of America, serving as president in 1975-76; and the Modern Humanities Research Association. He was director of the National Humanities Institute from 1974 to 1977 and was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a corresponding fellow of the British Academy.

Achievements

• Mack won three Guggenheim Fellowships over a span of 40 years: in 1942, 1964 and 1982. He was twice named a senior fellow of the National Humanities Center. During 1959-60, he was Fulbright Senior Research Scholar at the University of London. He was a visiting professor at UC Berkeley; the University of Washington, Seattle; University of Toronto; University of London; Smith College and others. He was a senior fellow at research libraries, including the William Andrews Clark Library and the Huntington Library, and was twice named senior research fellow for the National Endowment for the Humanities. At last count, Mack had been awarded six honorary doctoral degrees.

Works

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• book

  • Essential Articles for the Study of Alexander Pope

    (A well-respected scholar of Alexander Pope and William Sh...)

    1964
  • Everybody's Shakespeare: Reflections Chiefly on the Tragedies

    (Everybody’s Shakespeare brings the insights and wisdom of...)

    1993
  • The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces

    (A selection of Western literature containing only works w...)

    1992
  • Killing the king: three studies in Shakespeare's tragic structure

    (Shakespeare criticism.)

    1973
  • Alexander Pope: A Life 1986
  • Poetic Traditions of the English Renaissance 1982

Membership

• Modern Humanities Research Association , United Kingdom

• American Academy of Arts and Sciences , Massachusetts

• Modern Language Association , New York

• American Council on Education , Washington

• Shakespeare Association of America , Mississippi

• National Humanities Institute , Washington

• British Academy , London

• 

  Phi Beta Kappa , Washington

• Yale Shakespeare Institute , New Haven

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• “He was a brilliant and prolific scholar whose work on Pope and Shakespeare was widely admired,” said Ruth Bernard Yeazell, the Chace Family Professor and chair of the English department at Yale. “He was an immensely influential teacher whose work helped make Yale’s English department the pre-eminent English department of his time.”
  
  “He was not only a brilliant lecturer, whose lectures on Shakespeare were unforgettable,” said Eugene M. Waith, a friend and colleague who is the Douglas Tracy Smith Professor Emeritus of English Literature at Yale, “but also a man who had strong principles of education and whose advice was often listened to by the administration of the University.”

Connections

Mack is survived by his wife, Florence Brocklebank Mack; their three children, Prudence Young of Toronto, Sara Mack of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and Maynard Mack Jr. of Takoma Park, Maryland; and eight grandchildren.

Wife:

Florence Brocklebank Mack

Daughter:

Prudence Young

Daughter:

Sara Mack

Son:

Maynard Mack

Friend:

Douglas Tracy Smith

Douglas Tracy Smith is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at Yale University.