Thomas Okey

Thomas Okey (30 September 1852 – 4 May 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. Okey's first experience of the Italian language came when he attended the Extension Lectures at Toynbee Hall in the 1880s.[1][2]

Portrait of Thomas Okey

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

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.

[4]

He was made a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College in 1920.[2] Okey was also 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. A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature by John W. Cousin, 1910.
  2. "Okey, Thomas". 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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