author
Kenneth R. H. (Kenneth Robert Henderson) Mackenzie
1833–1886
A self-taught linguist and translator with a deep interest in esoteric thought, he moved easily between scholarship, publishing, and the world of nineteenth-century occult societies. He is best remembered for the influential Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia and for the air of mystery that still surrounds his life and work.
1 Audiobook
Burmah and the Burmese
by Kenneth R. H. (Kenneth Robert Henderson) Mackenzie
About the author
Born in Deptford near London on 31 October 1833, Kenneth Robert Henderson Mackenzie became known as an English linguist, orientalist, and autodidact. He built a reputation as a gifted man of letters, working as a translator and editor as well as a writer with wide-ranging intellectual interests.
His name is most closely linked to Freemasonry and esoteric studies. Mackenzie edited The Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia and was associated with the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia; later accounts also connect him with the wider circle of ideas that influenced the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. That mix of serious scholarship and occult reputation has made him a recurring figure in histories of Victorian mystical culture.
He died on 3 July 1886. Although some parts of his story have been retold in ways that blur fact and legend, the surviving record shows a restless, learned Victorian author whose work continued to interest readers long after his lifetime.