Thomas Okey

Thomas Okey (1852–1935) was an expert on basket weaving, a translator of Italian, and a writer on art and the topography of architecture and art works in Italy and France.[1][2]

Portrait de Thomas OKEY

In 1919, he became the first Serena Professor of Italian at Cambridge University.[3] Okey was a hereditary basket maker from a poor East End of London family, and on his appointment at Cambridge, he stated,[4]

Money...social position as such counts for nothing...

and

the consciousness that one stands for what one is worth as a scholar and a man... All stand on an equality of worth, from the porter at the gate to the Master in the lodge

Okey was a member of the Art Workers' Guild and was elected Master in 1914.[5]

Works
  • Venice and its Story (1904)[6]
  • Paris and its Story (1904)
  • Dante's Purgatorio (translator).[7]
  • The Little Flowers of Saint Francis of Assisi[8]
  • The Story of Avignon (1926)
  • The Little Flowers of St. Francis
  • Selections From the Vita Nuova
  • The Old Venetian Places and Old Venetian Folk
  • A Basketful of Memories: An Autobiographical Sketch (1930)

References
  1. Okey's first experience of the Italian language came when he attended the Extension Lectures at Toynbee Hall in the 1880s. A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature by John W. Cousin, 1910.
  2. "The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2004. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/54191. ISBN 978-0-19-861412-8. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  3. "Robert Hollander: Charles Singleton's Hidden Debts to Thomas Okey and John Sinclair". www.princeton.edu. Retrieved 11 April 2016.
  4. Christopher Brooke, Christopher N. L. Brooke, Damian Riehl Leader, Victor Morgan, Peter Searby (1988). A History of the University of Cambridge: Volume 4, 1870-1990. p. 251. ISBN 9780521343503.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  5. "Thomas Okey". Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851-1951, University of Glasgow History of Art and HATII. Retrieved 22 October 2021.
  6. Okey, Thomas (1 January 1904). Venice and Its Story. J. M. Dent & Company.
  7. Dante Alighieri, 1., Okey, T., Oelsner, H., Wicksteed, P. H. (Philip Henry). (1912). T he Purgatorio of Dante Alighieri. London: J.M. Dent & sons ltd.
  8. Okey, Thomas (19 September 2003). The Little Flowers of Saint Francis. Courier Corporation. ISBN 9780486431864.


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