In memoriam: Dr. Samuel Macey

Prof. Samuel L. Macey, a distinguished member of the Department of English for two decades, passed away on March 11, the eve of his 91st birthday.

Born in inner London, within the sound of the bells of Bow Church, and orphaned at twelve, Sam left school at sixteen, took a job at the London Stock Exchange, then enlisted as a seaman in the Royal Navy. He spent the war years (1940–46) adventurously, first in Coastal Forces (Dieppe), then the Far East Command (Burma), rising in the process to the rank of Lieutenant.

During the next eleven years he was heavily and very successfully involved in a variety of businesses (in London, then on Jersey), married June, his life companion, and fathered two daughters.

In 1957, for health reasons, he left the business world, planning a life of retired leisure in an agreeable setting. After considering alternatives, he moved with his family to Victoria in 1960. Retired, but anything but ready to stop working and satisfying the acute and very wide-ranging intellectual curiosity that was central to his nature, Sam was ready to start a new life as a student, a scholar, a teacher and an academic leader.

Sam had always desired higher education, and now he had the time and means to enjoy it. He completed a BA (Hons.) in English and German at UBC in 1964, then a PhD in English at the University of Washington in 1966, joing our English Department the same year as an assistant professor. An excellent teacher, a dedicated and highly productive scholar and an efficient administrator, he rose to the rank of professor and served in the years before his retirement as associate dean (1975–83) and dean (1983–86) of Graduate Studies.

He published widely in his main teaching field, eighteenth-century literature, including a fine book: Money and the Muse: Mercenary Motivation in Defoe and his Immediate Successors (1983). Even more impressive and indicative of the breadth and richness of his intellectual interests were his editorship of English Literary Studies from 1975 to 1993 and the books he wrote or edited as a very active member of the International Society for the Study of Time (of which he served as president, 1989–92): Clocks and the Cosmos: Time in Western Life and Thought (1980), Patriarchs of Time: Dualism in Saturn-Cronus, Father Time, the Watchmaker God, and Father Christmas (1987), The Dynamics of Progress: Time, Method, and Measure (1989), Time: A Bibliographical Guide (1991) and the Encyclopedia of Time (1994).

Sam Macey was a real presence. His energy, his optimism and his amusement at the absurdities of life will be missed.

Submitted by Thomas Cleary, a colleague, also retired, in the Department of English