Publius Vergilius Maro - or Virgil - was born near Mantua in 70 BC and was brought up there, although he attended schools in Cremona and Rome. Virgil's rural upbringing and his affinity with the countryside are evident in his earliest work, The Eclogues, a collection of ten pastoral poems. As an adult Virgil lived mostly in Naples, although he spent time in Rome and belonged to the circle of influential poets that included Horace. He also had connections to leading men within the senatorial class and to the Emperor Augustus himself. Following The Eclogues, Virgil wrote The Georgics, a didactic poem, and thereafter began his longest and most ambitious work, The Aeneid. He died in Brindisi in 19 BC. John William Mackail (1859-1945) was a Scottish academic of Oxford University and reformer of the British education system. Mackail was Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1906 to 1911, and President of the British Academy from 1932 to 1936.

He is most often remembered as a scholar of Virgil or as the official biographer of the socialist artist William Morris, of whom he was a friend.