Jack A. W. Bennett
Jack Arthur Walter Bennett (28 February 1911 – 29 January 1981)[1] was a New Zealand–born literary scholar.
Early life and education
Jack Arthur Walter Bennett was born at Mount Eden, Auckland, New Zealand, the eldest son of Ernest Bennett, a foreman for a shoe manufacturer, where he was a "shoe clicker and pattern cutter", and Alexandra, née Corrall, both born in Leicester, England. The Bennetts lived in a "suburban bungalow" called "Rocky Nook".[2][3] Bennett attended Mount Albert Grammar School in Auckland, New Zealand.[4] He notably wrote the Mount Albert Grammar School hymn, which is sung at school assemblies to this day.
Bennett studied at the University of Auckland, where he is described by biographer James McNeish as "poor and deserving"[3] before going on to Merton College, Oxford,[5] where, still indigent, he survived on a diet of Cornish pasties.
Career
In McNeish's book Dance of the Peacocks, he is noted as a member of what was to be described in British academe as the Oxford "New Zealand Mafia",[6] a loose-knit group of extraordinarily gifted young men from New Zealand who studied at Oxford University, many as Rhodes Scholars, before the Second World War. The link between them was to endure for the rest of their lives. The group included John Mulgan, Dan Davin, James Munro Bertram, Desmond Patrick Costello, Charles Brasch, Norman Davis and Ian Milner. McNeish describes Bennett as "at an angle, separated by the exuberance of his scholarship, his saintliness, and his forgetfulness ... he considered himself lucky to have received the Scholarship [to Oxford], since he forgot to include any testimonials with his application".[7]
McNeish also mentions Bennett's work with the British Information Service in America during World War II: asked to help out for a few weeks, he remained for the duration, returning to Oxford in 1943 and at the end of the war.[8]
He became best known as a scholar of
He was one of the
He is buried at the Ascension Parish Burial Ground in Cambridge with his wife, Gwyneth (1916–1980).
Notes
- ^ BENNETT, Prof. Jack Arthur Walter, Who Was Who, A & C Black, 1920–2015; online edn, Oxford University Press, 2014
- ISBN 978-0-19-861412-8. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ a b McNeish 2003.
- ^ "Successful Albertians & Albertian Biographies". Mount Albert Grammar School. Retrieved 23 April 2019.
- ^ Levens, R.G.C., ed. (1964). Merton College Register 1900-1964. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. p. 242.
- ^ McNeish, James (2003). Dance of the Peacocks: New Zealanders in Exile in the Time of Hitler and Mao Tse-tung. Random House New Zealand. p. 356-364
- ^ McNeish 2003, p. 29.
- ^ McNeish 2003, p. 274.
- ^ a b Glyer 2007.
- ^ "Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter B" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 15 June 2011.
References
- ISBN 978-0-87338-890-0.
- ISBN 978-1-86941-564-8.
Further reading
- Piero Boitani & Anna Torti, eds. (1983) Literature in Fourteenth-Century England: The J. A. W. Bennett Memorial Lectures, Perugia, 1981–1982. Tübingen: Narr; Cambridge: Brewer.
- P. L. Heyworth, ed. (1981). Medieval Studies for J. A. W. Bennett: Aetatis Suae LXX. Oxford: Clarendon Press.