Background
Angela Margaret Mackail was born on January 30, 1890 in London. She was the eldest daughter
of Margaret Burne-Jones and John Mackail, a Scottish classical scholar and Oxford Professor
of Poetry. Her maternal grandparents were Georgiana Macdonald and Sir Edward Burne-Jones, a
pre-Raphaelite painter and partner in the design firm of Morris and Company. Angela attended
school in London and Paris, then met and married professional singer James Campbell McInnes
in 1911. The couple had three children before divorcing in 1917. In 1918 Angela met and
married engineer George Thirkell, traveling with him to Melbourne, Australia in 1920. The
couple's son Lancelot George Thirkell was born in 1921, and Angela left with him in 1929 to
return permanently to London. She had begun writing in Melbourne, publishing a few articles,
and in London published her first books in 1931. She continued her writing career with a
series of novels based on Anthony Trollope's fictional English county of Barsetshire, which
portray English life and society in the years before, during, and after World War II. Angela
Thirkell died in Bramley, Surrey, in January 1961.
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