author
John Mavrogordato
A scholar, translator, and novelist, this British-Greek writer helped bring modern Greek literature to English-language readers while also building a distinguished academic career at Oxford.
1 Audiobook
The World in Chains: Some Aspects of War and Trade
by John Mavrogordato
About the author
Born in London in 1882, John Nicholas Mavrogordato was a British-Greek scholar of Byzantine and modern Greek literature. Sources from the Onassis Cavafy Archive describe him as a scholar in modern Greek letters, a Byzantinist, and a translator, and note that he succeeded R. M. Dawkins in Oxford’s Chair of Byzantine and Modern Greek Language and Literature.
He also wrote fiction and nonfiction of his own. Library and author records connect him with works including Cassandra in Troy, Letters from Greece, and The World in Chains, while modern Greek literature bibliographies also list him as a translator and critic.
Mavrogordato died in 1970. Remembered both as an academic and as a literary figure, he stands out for helping English-speaking readers discover Greek writing through scholarship, translation, and original books of his own.