During a long life Compton Mackenzie produced 112 books and was active in many areas. His enthusiasms were as varied as religion, spying, ancient and modern Greece, islands, the gramophone, Scottish nationalism, the Indian army under the Raj and new broadcast media. Over time his writing often represented, and helped to pay for, these passions. His early work, such as

Carnival

(1912) and

Sinister Street

(2 vols., 1913, 1914), was a critical success, and after 1940 he gained a new audience with well-crafted comedies such as

The Monarch of the Glen

(1941) and

Whisky Galore

(1947). Mackenzie was one of the last voices to speak from memory of the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. His ten-volume autobiography covers

the period from the 1880s to the early 1970s.

Both Mackenzie's parents,

2884 words

Citation: Booth, Howard J.. "Sir Compton Mackenzie". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 June 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2857, accessed 19 March 2024.]

2857 Sir Compton Mackenzie 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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