author
John Kenrick
1788–1877
A serious 19th-century scholar of the ancient world, he helped bring German historical and classical scholarship into English intellectual life. Best known for studies of Egypt and Phoenicia, he spent much of his career teaching and writing from York.
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About the author
Born in Exeter in 1788, John Kenrick was the son of the Unitarian minister Timothy Kenrick. He studied at Glasgow University, graduating M.A. in 1810, and soon joined Manchester College at York as a tutor in classics and history. Later, after time set aside for study in Germany, he attended lectures in Göttingen and Berlin under several leading scholars of the day.
Kenrick built a reputation as a disciplined teacher and an able classical historian. When the college later returned to Manchester, he became professor of history and held the post until 1850, while continuing to live in York. He was also active in the Yorkshire Philosophical Society and served the Yorkshire Museum as honorary curator of antiquities after Charles Wellbeloved.
His books helped Victorian readers engage with the ancient Mediterranean world, especially Ancient Egypt under the Pharaohs and Phoenicia. He died in York in 1877, remembered as a learned, careful scholar whose teaching influenced later writers and ministers.