Ronald Brunlees McKerrow was a bibliographer and Shakespeare scholar. He was born in London on 12th December 1872. He was educated at Harrow, then studied engineering at King’s College in London. After coming into an inheritance, he gradually abandoned science for literature, attending Trinity College, Cambridge in 1895, where he was awarded the Chancellor’s English Medal.
Despite changing academic disciplines, the engineer in McKerrow was never far away. The mechanics of literary production, the way books were designed and built, were a key interest for him, as opposed to the more esoteric matters of literary interpretation, the discussion of themes and ideas. As early as 1897, McKerrow acquired and taught himself how to operate a small printing press while he was Professor of English
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Citation: Owens, Rebekah . "R. B. McKerrow". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 September 2014 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=13395, accessed 23 April 2024.]
