Bert Archer

Bert Archer (1968-now)

Bert Archer (born 1968) is a Canadian author, journalist, travel writer, essayist and critic. Archer was born in Montreal and lived in Calgary and Vancouver before attending St. Michael's University School in Victoria, British Columbia, the University of St. Michael's College at the University of Toronto, and Trinity College, Dublin. He was editor of his college's arts journal, The Grammateion in his second undergraduate year, and as editor-in-chief of The Mike, the college newspaper, a year later. The year after that, he was president of the Ontario region of the Canadian University Press, North America's oldest national student organization. While still in school he worked as an assistant to editor David Colbert at Harper & Collins Canada. In 1994, he was hired as an editorial assistant by Quill & Quire, Canada's national book trade magazine. Two years later, as review editor, Archer was pressured to resign after writing an essay in the Financial Post which some considered derogatory to certain elements in the Canadian publishing industry, specifically, the small presses. He was subsequently hired as a columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest circulation newspaper, to review books published by small Canadian publishers. Since then, Archer has been an editor at NOW and Eye Weekly, Toronto's two weekly alternative arts magazines, as well as the Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail, Canada's national newspaper. As of 2008, he is a columnist for Toronto Life magazine and writes for the Globe and Mail. His piece about the ethnic grocery market in Canada for Report on Business magazine was part of The Future of Food package that won a 2007 National Magazine Award. http://www. magazine-awards. com/1/6/5/6/index1. shtml He is the author of The End of Gay (and the death of heterosexuality), published in Canada in 1999, in the US in 2002 and the UK in 2004. The book argues that there is no such thing as inherent sexual identity, and that sexual behaviour is a product of many factors, personal will not least among them. The book became a staple on reading lists for college and university courses dealing with identity politics, sexuality and gender. Archer has also contributed chapters to several books: "Why Boys Are Better Than Girls" for What I Meant to Say (2006), Creating a Toronto of the Imagination for uTOpia (2006), as well as chapters for its follow-up, GreenTOpia (2007), and a book about water called HtO (2008), excerpted in the National Post, Canada's other national newspaper.

Lee Archer's Books:

[Lease To Doomsday]

Tags: arthur mee a hammerton eds  arthur mee  charles whibley  charles whibley  william hillary  henry blossom  frances martin  gerard de nerval  eleanora hunt  hume nisbet  

Ernest Favenc

Ernest Favenc

Ernest Favenc (21 October 1845 14 November 1908) was an explorer of Australia, a journalist and historian.

Ernest Favenc's Books:

[The Explorers Of Australia And Their Life Work]

Tags: prentice mulford  john cleland  daniel hack tuke  grace king  carl sandburg  william henry withrow  jeffrey carver  charlotte ouisconsin van cleve  

David Widgery

David Widgery

David Widgery (27 April 1947 - 26 October 1992) was a British Trotskyist writer, journalist, polemicist, physician, and activist. Widgery was born in Barnet and grew up in Maidenhead, Berkshire. He contracted polio as a child and was expelled from sixth form for publishing a magazine. In 1965, Widgery met Allen Ginsberg, then visited Watts, where he encountered the civil rights movement, followed by Cuba. On return to Britain, he studied medicine at the Royal Free Hospital Medical School before writing for New Statesman and Oz, becoming co-editor of Oz during 1971. Widgery joined the International Socialists in 1967, remaining in the group as it became the Socialist Workers Party. In 1972 he began working at Bethnal Green Hospital, and later in the decade he published his first book, The Left in Britain, 195668. Widgery contributed to Ink, Time Out and City Limits, also writing for New Statesman, Socialist Review, International Socialism and New Society. He also presented a paper at Ninth symposium of the National Deviancy Conference in Sheffield (7-8 January 1972) on 'The Politics of the Underground' His written works include The Chatto Book of Dissent (1991), an anthology of dissident writings co-edited with Michael Rosen, Some Lives!: A GP's East End (1991), the story of his experience as a doctor in London's East End, The National Health: A Radical Perspective, and Beating Time (1986), an account of the Rock Against Racism movement of the late 1970s. When Widgery died, aged 45, excess alcohol, barbiturates and pethidine were found in his bloodstream, but it is not known whether this was an accidental or intentional overdose. One obituary described Widgery as "a radical humanist intellectual on permanent loan to revolutionary socialism."

F Widgery's Books:

[Lynton And Lynmouth]

Alastair Mcintosh

Alastair Mcintosh (1955-now)

Alastair McIntosh (born 1955) is a Scottish writer, academic and activist. He was brought up in Leurbost on the Isle of Lewis and is married to Vrne Nicolas. He is involved with Scottish land reform especially on Eigg and campaigned successfully against the Harris superquarry in Lingerbay. He is a fellow of the Centre for Human Ecology, an Honorary Fellow of the Schumacher Society, and helped to set up the Govan based GalGael Trust of which he is Treasurer and a non-executive director. In 2006 he was appointed to the honorary position of Visiting Professor of Human Ecology at the University of Strathclyde (Department of Geography & Sociology) - the first such post in Human ecology in a Scottish university. Alastair also features on Nizlopi's mini album 'Extraordinary' on the track titled 'Homage To Young Men'.

Will Mcintosh's Books:

[Echoes In Evening Wear | Eyelid Movies]

Aulus Gellius

Aulus Gellius

Aulus Gellius (ca. 125 ADafter 180 AD), was a Latin author and grammarian, who was probably born and certainly brought up at Rome. He was educated in Athens, after which he returned to Rome, where he held a judicial office. He is famous for his Attic Nights, a commonplace book, or compilation of notes on grammar, philosophy, history, antiquarianism and other subjects, preserving fragments of many authors and works who otherwise might be unknown today.

Aulus Gellius's Books:

[Stories From Aulus Gellius]

Jaroslav Haek

Jaroslav Haek (1883-1923)

Jaroslav Haek (April 30, 1883-January 3, 1923) was a Czech humorist, satirist, writer and socialist anarchist best known for his novel The Good Soldier vejk, an unfinished collection of farcical incidents about a soldier in World War I and a satire on the ineptitude of authority figures, which has been translated into sixty languages. He also wrote some 1,500 short stories. He was a journalist, bohemian, and practical joker.

Jaroslav Hasek's Books:

[Le Brave Soldat Chveik | Nouvelles Aventures Du Brave Soldat Chveik]

Tags: david goodis  antonio boto  rosel george brown  frank belknap long jr  william clinton  frank belknap long jr  charles henry lerrigo  eva hope  nick mamatas  isabella alden  

Randall Garrett

Randall Garrett

Mark Phillips was the joint pseudonym used by science fiction writers Laurence Mark Janifer and Randall Philip Garrett in the early 1960s. Together they authored several humorous short novels in the so-called "Psi-Power" series: Brain Twister, The Impossibles, and Supermind. For Brain Twister they were nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1960 (under the novel's original title, "That Sweet Little Old Lady").

Randall Garrett's Books:

[A Spaceship Named Mcguire | A World By The Tale | After A Few Words | Anchorite | Anything You Can Do | Brain Twister | But I Dont Think | By Proxy | Card Trick | Damned If You Dont | Dead Giveaway | Despoilers Of The Golden Empire | Fifty Per Cent Prophet | Hail To The Chief | Hanging By A Thread | Heist Job On Thizar | In Case Of Fire | Instant Of Decision | Modus Vivendi | Nor Iron Bars A Cage | Or Your Money Back | Out Like A Light | Pagan Passions | Psichopath | Quest Of The Golden Ape | Suite Mentale | Supermind | That Sweet Little Old Lady | The Asses Of Balaam | The Destroyers | The Eyes Have It | The Foreign Hand Tie | The Highest Treason | The Impossibles | The Man Who Hated Mars | The Measure Of A Man | The Unnecessary Man | Thin Edge | Time Fuze | Tinkers Dam | Unwise Child | Viewpoint | Vigorish | With No Strings Attached]

Tags: frank channing haddock  george griffith  a houseman  emilia pardo bazn  young allison  ignacio manuel altamirano  d clippinger  annie sillevis  h stevens  

Herodotus

Herodotus (484-425)

Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who lived in the 5th century BC (c. 484 BC c. 425 BC). He was born in Caria, Halicarnassus. He is regarded as the "Father of History" in Western culture. He was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a well-constructed and vivid narrative. He is exclusively known for writing The Histories, a record of his "inquiry" (or histora, a word that passed into Latin and took on its modern meaning of history) into the origins of the Greco-Persian Wars which occurred in 490 and 480-479 BCespecially since he includes a narrative account of that period, which would otherwise be poorly documented; and many long digressions concerning the various places and people he encountered during wide-ranging travels around the lands of the Mediterranean and Black Sea. Although some of his stories were not completely accurate, he claimed that he was reporting only what had been told to him.

Herodotus's Books:

[An Account Of Egypt]

Tags: carl russell fish  christian johann heinrich heine  hans bethge  gordon home  w h murray  charlotte perkins gilman  catherine chisnall  benjamin cardozo  frank lewis nason  

Marc Bloch

Marc Bloch (1886-1944)

Marc Lopold Benjamin Bloch (6 July 1886 in Lyon 16 June 1944 in Saint-Didier-de-Formans) was a French historian who cofounded the highly influential Annales School of French social history. Bloch was a quintessential modernist. An assimilated Alsatian Jew from an academic family in Paris, he was deeply affected in his youth by the Dreyfus Affair. He studied at the elite cole Normale Suprieure; in 1908-9 he studied at Berlin and Leipzig. He fought in the trenches of the Western Front for four years. In 1919 he became Lecturer in Medieval history at Strasbourg University, after the German professors were all expelled; he was called to the Sorbonne in Paris in 1936 as professor of economic history. He is best known for his pioneering studies French Rural History and Feudal Society and his posthumously-published unfinished meditation on the writing of history, The Historian's Craft. He was captured and shot by the Gestapo during the German occupation of France for his work in the French Resistance.

Marc Bloch's Books:

[Letrange Defaite]

Tags: fyodor dostoyevsky  andrew merry  francois guizot  william allen white  francois ren de chateaubriand  alf burnett  bradner buckner  eline roch  ivy kellerman  cornlis de witt willcox  

Constantin Franois Chassebuf

Constantin Franois Chassebuf

Constantin Franois de Chassebuf, comte de Volney (3 February 1757 25 April 1820) was a French philosopher, historian, orientalist, and politician. He was at first surnamed Boisgirais after his father's estate, but afterwards assumed the name of Volney.

C Volney's Books:

[The Ruins Or Meditation On The Revolutions Of Empires]

Albert Arnold Bennett

Albert Arnold Bennett

Albert Arnold Bennett (April 6, 1849 October 12, 1909) was a Baptist missionary and hymn composer who founded the Baptist Theological Seminary of Yokohama, which later became Kanto Gakuin University.

E Arnold Bennett's Books:

[Mr Prohack | The Lion Share | The Regent]

Tags: hugh lofting  charles allen  hermann hesse  garrett serviss  alexis de toqueville  frank herbert  alice dunbar  charles perrault  aleksandr nicolaevich ostrovsky  

Charles French Blake Forster

Charles French Blake Forster

Charles French Blake-Forster was an Irish writer. Born at Forster Street House, Galway City, the eldest son of Captain Francis Blake-Forster of the Connaught Rangers, educated at home and later in England. Began to play a prominent part in Galway's public affairs upon his return in his late teens. He became a town councellor, a member of the local Board of Guardians, and in 1874 High Sheriff of Galway. He presided in this capacity at three Parliamently elections in 1874.

H Forster's Books:

[From Xylographs To Lead Molds A D 1440 A D 1921]

Cicero

Cicero (106-43)

Marcus Tullius Cicero (January 3, 106 BC - December 7, 43 BC; sometimes anglicized as "Tully"), was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists. He introduced the Romans to the chief schools of Greek philosophy and created a Latin philosophical vocabulary (with neologisms such as humanitas, qualitas, quantitas, and essentia) distinguishing himself as a linguist, translator, and philosopher. An impressive orator and successful lawyer, Cicero thought that his political career was his most important achievement. Today, he is appreciated primarily for his humanism and philosophical and political writings. His voluminous correspondence, much of it addressed to his friend Atticus, has been especially influential, introducing the art of refined letter writing to European culture. Cornelius Nepos, the 1st-century BC biographer of Atticus, remarked that Cicero's letters contained such a wealth of detail "concerning the inclinations of leading men, the faults of the generals, and the revolutions in the government" that their reader had little need for a history of the period. Cicero's speeches and letters remain some of the most important primary sources that survive on the last days of the Roman Republic. During the chaotic latter half of the first century B.C. marked by civil wars and the dictatorship of Gaius Julius Caesar, Cicero championed a return to the traditional republican government. However, his career as a statesman was marked by inconsistencies and a tendency to shift his position in response to changes in the political climate. His indecision may be attributed to his sensitive and impressionable personality; he was prone to overreaction in the face of political and private change. "Would that he had been able to endure prosperity with greater self-control and adversity with more fortitude!" wrote C. Asinius Pollio, a contemporary Roman statesman and historian. Cicero became an enemy of Mark Antony, attacking him in a series of speeches. He was proscribed an enemy of the state by the Second Triumvirate and subsequently murdered in 43 BC.

Cicero's Books:

[De Inventione | De Officiis | On Friendship Or Laelius | On Old Age | The Orations Of Marcus Tullius Cicero Volume 4]

Tags: caroline lamb  dwight swain  camllle lemonnier  arnold henry savage landor  izola forrester  henry rider haggard  arthur halbert dangers  agnes strickland  dumas fils  frederick niecks  

Giuseppe Giacosa

Giuseppe Giacosa

Giuseppe Giacosa (21 October 1847 1 September 1906) was an Italian poet, playwright and librettist. He was born in Colleretto Parella, now Colleretto Giacosa, near Turin. His father was a magistrate. Giuseppe went to the University of Turin, studying in the University of Turin, Faculty of Law. Though he gained a degree in law, he did not pursue a legal career. He gained initial fame for writing the poems in Una Partita a Scacchi (a Game of Chess) in 1871. His main field was playwriting, which he accomplished with both insight and simplicity, using subjects set in Piedmont and themes addressing contemporary bourgeois values. He wrote La Dame de Challant for noted French actress Sarah Bernhardt, which she produced in New York in 1891. He also wrote the librettos used by Giacomo Puccini in La bohme, Tosca and Madama Butterfly in conjunction with Luigi Illica. See also Scapigliatura.

Giuseppe Giacosa's Books:

[Acquazzoni In Montagna | Come Le Foglie | Diritti Dellanima | La Zampa Del Gatto | Non Dir Quattro Se Non Lhai Nel Sacco | Resa A Discrezione]

Tags: william lee  ed earl repp  rosel george brown  mack reynolds  edward naylor  frank robinson  steven brust  alexander smith  g alley  dale owen  

Vincent De Paul Nyonda

Vincent De Paul Nyonda

Vincent de Paul Nyonda (19181995) was a Gabonese playwright and Minister. Nyonda served under the administration of the first Gabonese President Lon M'ba, and was a prominent political figure in that administration. He served as Minister of Public Works from 1957 until 1962 and as Minister of Justice from 1963 to 1964. Following the sudden and suspicious death of Lon M'ba, Vice President Omar Bongo took over as head of state. When Vincent de Paul Nyonda refused to join the new government, one he deemed illegitimate, Omar Bongo ordered his arrest and imprisonment. Nyonda endured weeks of physical and verbal abuse, but a decision was made to spare his life. He was sent to a small village and cut from his electoral base. In the small village of Mandji, away from the luxurious life that his social status had provided, he learnt to live a much simpler life. It is there that he built his house with the help of a few volunteers who lent a hand. He hunted and grew vegetables to provide for his family. It is also during this time that Nyonda began for writing. He wrote and directed numerous plays, and hired local students to perform them. It is during one such performance that Mrs. Josephine Bongo, who was touring the province of Ngounie in the south of Gabon, and of which Mandji is the main city, had the opportunity see one of his plays. Upon returning to Libreville, she convinced her husband, President Omar Bongo, to allow Nyonda back to Libreville. Nyonda returned to Libreville and continued to write and direct. He wrote numerous plays and books and became a prominent playwright in Gabon. Ironically he also played a president in the African movie Demain Jour nouveau. According to the earlier Gabonese constitution, Paul Marie Yembi (the first post-independence Gabonese prime minister), and Vincent de Paul Nyonda should have taken over as head of the state. However, a few days before the mysterious death of President Lon M'ba, the constitution was amended. Some suspect the involvement of the French government, who they say was determined to control this oil-rich nation. Rather than return to politics however, Nyonda chose to devote his life to his writing. He ultimately became a successful playwright and was dubbed, rightfully so, "Father of the Gabonese Theater". Echoing Shakespeare, his favorite quote was: "Tout est thtralit", ("life is a stage"). Nyonda died in Libreville, Gabon on 20 January 1995 at age 78. His autobiography Du villageois au minister published by L'harmattan of Paris depicts his incredible life as a politician, a writer, and a family man. The Gabonese university has since renamed several facilities after the author. Many African literary prizes also bear his name.

Fr Vincent De Paul's Books:

[Memoir]

Tags: g lytton strachey  garrett putman serviss  william denton  arthur judson brown  amanda mckittrick ros  joseph farrell  w hastings macaulay  ferdinando fontana  e kennedy  

Charlotte Lennox

Charlotte Lennox

Charlotte Lennox (c. 1730 January 4, 1804) was a British author and poet of the 18th century. She is most famous now as the author of The Female Quixote and for her association with Samuel Johnson, Joshua Reynolds, and Samuel Richardson, but she had a long career and wrote poetry, prose, and drama.

Charlotte Lennox's Books:

[The Female Quixote | The Life Of Harriot Stuart Written By Herself]

Tags: william allen  william scott  emma lazarus  william logan  alfredo descragnolle taunay  georgiana fullerton  henry vizetelly  frederic kilner  

Jules Lermina

Jules Lermina

Jules Lermina (18391915) was a French writer. He began his career as a journalist in 1859. He was arrested for his socialist political opinions, and received Victor Hugo's support. He published a number of Edgar Allan Poe-inspired collections, Histoires Incroyables [Incredible Tales] (1885), Nouvelles Histoires Incroyables [New Incredible Tales] (1888) and a short novel, L'lixir de Vie [The Elixir Of Life] (1890) (translated by Brian Stableford and included in Panic in Paris).

Jules Lermina's Books:

[Histoires Incroyables | La Deux Fois Morte | Leffrayante Aventure | Lelixir De Vie | Lenigme | To Ho Le Tueur Dor]

Tags: h rider haggard  anton chekov  guerra junqueiro  alexandre dumas fils  frederic manning  william logan  felix lope de vega  basilius valentinus  charles almanzo babcock  alice henry  

Roger Lee Vernon

Roger Lee Vernon

Roger Lee Vernon was an American Science Fiction writer. He got a master's degree from Northwestern University, traveled extensively throughout North American and Europe, and while writing his stories in the early 1950s worked as a Chicago high school teacher.

Vernon Lee's Books:

[A Phantom Lover | Euphorion | Hauntings | Hortus Vitae | Laurus Nobilis | The Beautiful | The Countess Of Albany]

Tags: george james  francis march  william swinton  william lighton  william henry withrow  frank stockton  charles raymond barrett  emerson hough  edmond moore hamilton  hervey keyes  

Edgar Pangborn

Edgar Pangborn

Edgar Pangborn (February 25, 1909 - February 1, 1976) was an American mystery, historical, and science fiction author.

Edgar Pangborn's Books:

[The Good Neighbors]

Tags: harold leland goodwin  adam mickiewicz  carolyn wells  elizabeth robins  elizabeth towne  frank riley  e grosser  d francisco de moncada  

Jo Walton

Jo Walton (1964-now)

Jo Walton is a Welsh-Canadian fantasy and science fiction writer and poet. She won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2002 and the World Fantasy award for her novel Tooth and Claw in 2004. Her novel Ha'penny was a co-winner of the 2008 Prometheus Award. Her novel Lifelode won the 2010 Mythopoeic Award.

Jo Walton's Books:

[The Prize In The Game | The Rebirth Of Pan]

Tags: edward bok  arthur burks  hjalmar bergman  clark ashton smith  arthur quiller couch  elizabeth madox roberts  j patterson  robert ervin howard  jim harmon  manly wade wellman  

Christopher Phelps

Christopher Phelps (1965-now)

Christopher Phelps (born 1965) is an American political and intellectual historian of the twentieth century. The subjects of his research and writing include philosophical pragmatism, concepts of class and labor in social thought, the fate of the American Left and the socialist ideal, and ideas of race in American and African American history. Phelps teaches in the School of American and Canadian Studies at the University of Nottingham in England, having previously taught history at the Ohio State University, the University of Oregon, and Simon Fraser University in Canada. He has received the Fulbright Award twice, to teach philosophy at the University of Pcs in Hungary in 2000 and American Studies at the University of d in Poland in 2004-2005.

Ah Phelps's Books:

[The Merchants Of Venus]

Miguel De Unamuno

Miguel De Unamuno (1864-1936)

Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo (29 September 1864 31 December 1936) was a Spanish essayist, novelist, poet, playwright and philosopher from Bilbao, Biscay, Basque Country, Spain.

Miguel De Unamuno's Books:

[San Manuel Bueno Martir]

George Hubbard Blakeslee

George Hubbard Blakeslee

George Hubbard Blakeslee (August 27, 1871 May 5, 1954) was an academic, professor of history and international relations at Clark University, and the founder of the Journal of Race Development, which despite its name suggestive of eugenics was, in fact, the first American journal devoted to international relations. http://www. clarku. edu/research/archives/blakeslee/scope. cfm This journal was later renamed the Journal of International Relations, which in turn was merged with Foreign Affairs. Born in Geneseo, New York, he was the brother of the botanist Albert Francis Blakeslee. Having graduated from Wesleyan University (A.B.1893, A.M. 1897), George Blakeslee then studied at Leipzig University and Oxford University between 1901 and 1903. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1903. Blakeslee participated in a number of international bodies: the Washington Disarmament Conference of 1921, the Lytton Commission of 1931-32, and in 1942 led the Far Eastern Unit that was a subcommittee of the Advisory Committee on Post-War Foreign Policy at the State Department. This unit, though its designation changed several times before the US occupation of Japan, led to the post-World War II Far East Commission on which he served. He was also a member of the board of trustees of the World Peace Foundation. He died at Worcester, Massachusetts in 1954.

B Blakeslee's Books:

[History Of The Sixteenth Connecticut Volunteers]

Tags: alva johnston  finley peter dunne  frances power cobbe  william combe  william hillary  william walton  alfred roe  democritus junior  

Arthur Mee And A Hammerton

Arthur Mee And A Hammerton

Arthur Mee (21 July 1875 - 27 May 1943) was a British writer, journalist and educator. He is best known for The Harmsworth Self-Educator, The Children's Encyclopaedia, The Children's Newspaper, and The King's England. He produced other works, usually with a patriotic tone, especially on the subjects of history or the countryside.

J Hammerton's Books:

[Mr Punch After Dinner Stories]

Tags: william tilden  murray leinster  hans bethge  felicia skene  charlotte bront  edward bellamy  charles desnoyer  ernest rhys  

William Edmonstoune Aytoun

William Edmonstoune Aytoun

William Edmondstoune Aytoun (21 June 1813 4 August 1865) was a Scottish poet, humorist and writer. Born in Edinburgh, he was the only son of Roger Aytoun, a writer to the signet, and was related to Sir Robert Aytoun. To his mother, a woman of culture, he owed his early fondness for literature (including ballad poetry), his political sympathies, and his admiration for the House of Stuart. At the age of eleven years he was sent to the Edinburgh Academy, and from there to the University of Edinburgh. During 1833 he spent a few months in London studying law, but in September of that year he went to study German at Aschaffenburg, where he remained until April 1834. He then resumed his legal studies in his father's chambers, was admitted a writer to the signet during 1835, and five years later was certified a Scottish lawyer. By his own confession, though he followed the law, he never could overtake it. His first publication, a volume entitled Poland, Homer, and other Poems, in which he expressed his eager interest in the state of Poland, had been published during 1832. While in Germany he made a translation in blank verse of the first part of Faust; but, forestalled by other translations, it was never published. During 1836 he made his earliest contributions to Blackwood's Magazine, translations from Uhland, and from 1839 until his death he remained on the staff of Blackwood's. In it appeared most of his humorous prose stories, such as The Glenmutchkin Railway, How I Became a Yeoman, and How I Stood for the Dreepdaily Burghs. In the same magazine his main poetical work was published, the Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers, and a novel, partly autobiographical, Norman Sinclair. About 1841 he became acquainted with Theodore Martin, and in association with him wrote a series of humorous articles on the fashions and follies of the time, in which were interspersed the verses which afterwards became popular as the Ben Gaultier Ballads (1855). Another work was Firmilian, a Spasmodic Tragedy, under the nom-de-plume of T. Percy Jones, intended to satirise a group of poets and critics, including Gilfillan, Dobell, Bailey, and Alexander Smith. His reputation as a poet is based mainly on Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers (1848). During 1845 he was appointed professor of rhetoric and belles lettres at the University of Edinburgh. His lectures attracted large numbers of students, raising the attendance from 30 to 150. His services in support of the Tory party, especially during the Anti-Corn-Law struggle, received official recognition with his appointment (1852) as sheriff of Orkney and Zetland. He was married to a daughter of Professor Wilson (Christopher North).

William Edmonstoune Aytoun's Books:

[The Bon Gaultier Ballads]

Tags: david masson  robert abernathy  edward eggleston  william caxton  ferdinando fontana  frank belknap long jr  louis trimble  andrew carnegie  blackwood ketcham benson  grace isabel colbron and auguste groner