In 1999, McClellan was named a Sterling Professor, Yale's highest professorial honor. McClellan was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1977. In 1998 he was honored by the Japanese government with the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon. His other major awards include the Kikuchi Kan Prize () for literature in 1994, the Noma Prize for literary translation in 1995 and the Association for Asian Studies Award for Distinguished Contributions to Asian Studies in 2005. In addition to his committee work at Chicago and Yale, McClellan served on the Board of the Council for International Exchange of Scholars (CIES), the American Advisory Committee of the Japan Foundation, the American Oriental Society, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the editorial board of the Journal of Japanese Studies, and visiting committees in East Asian studies at Harvard and Princeton. His publications include translations of novels by Natsume Sōseki (in addition to "Kokoro", "Grass on the Wayside") and Shiga Naoya ("A Dark Night's Passing"); the translation of a memoir by Yoshikawa Eiji; a book of essays, "Two Japanese Novelists: Soseki and Toson"; and a biography of 19th-century Japanese "bluestocking" Shibue Io, "Woman in a Crested Kimono". A festschrift published in his honor by the University of Michigan Center for Japanese Studies, notes: "Among McClellan's students his seminars have become lore. ... The depth and breadth of readings these seminars required were a revolution in pedagogy when McClellan first began them over 20 years ago; and they continue to represent an ideal of graduate training in the field. ... He taught his students to ask the most fundamental questions about the literary imagination: how language functions within the history of literary forms and in the context of society, history, politics and the existential yearnings of a singular imagination." McClellan remained a British citizen until his death. His wife, Rachel, died in January 2009. He is succeeded by a son, Andrew, of Watertown, Massachusetts; a daughter, Sarah, of Somerville, Massachusetts; and five grandsons. A "festschrift" was published in his honor by the University of Michigan Center for Japanese Studies. The 16 critical essays and selected modern period translations were compiled to demonstrate the high standards set by Professor McClellan. The contributors' work was intended to acknowledge the esteem McClellan earned as teacher and mentor.