SOURCE: “Compton Mackenzie,” in Gods of Modern Grub Street: Impressions of Contemporary Authors, Frederick A. Stokes Co., 1923, pp. 183-89.

In the following essay, Adcock offers a brief overview of Mackenzie's life and career.

From a literary and dramatic point of view, Compton Mackenzie may almost be said to have been born in the purple. Even a quite modest minor prophet who had stood by his cradle at West Hartlepool, in January, 1883, might have ventured to predict a future for him. For his father was the well-known actor Edward Compton, author of several plays and founder of the Compton Comedy Company, and his aunt was “Leah” Bateman, one of the most famous Lady Macbeth's who ever walked the stage; his uncle C. G. Compton was a novelist of parts; and he numbers among his distant relations the poet and critic John Addington Symonds and that brilliant and, nowadays, too...