Innes, Michael

Michael Innes is the pen name adopted by John Innes Mackintosh Stewart, a British author and professor of literature at Oxford. Michael Innes was the son of the Director of Education in Edinburgh. He attended Edinburgh Academy and Oriel College, Oxford, graduating in 1928. Then followed a long and distinguished academic career. He taught at the University of Leeds 1930–34. It was there he met his future wife, Margaret Hardwich, a young medical student and later physicist. They had five children together. The family was based in Australia between 1935 and 1945, where Innes was Jury Professor of English at the University of Adelaide, South Australia. On his return to Britain he taught at Queen’s University, Belfast, (1946–48) and from 1949 onwards at Oxford University.