Edinburgh Sketches & Memories

by David Masson

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462 pages, Hardcover

First published October 9, 2008

About the author

Professor David Mather Masson FRSE RSA LLD DLitt was a Scottish academic, supporter of women's suffrage, literary critic and historian.

Masson was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School and at Marischal College, University of Aberdeen. Intending to enter the Church, he proceeded to Edinburgh University, where he studied theology under Dr. Thomas Chalmers, with whom he remained friendly until the latter's death in 1847. However, abandoning his aspirations to the ministry, be returned to Aberdeen to undertake the editorship of the Banner, a weekly paper devoted to the advocacy of Free Kirk principles. After two years he resigned this post and went back to Edinburgh to pursue a literary career. There he wrote a great deal, contributing to Fraser's Magazine, Dublin University Magazine (in which appeared his essays on Thomas Chatterton) and other periodicals. In 1847 he moved to London.

He was a secretary of the "Society of the Friends of Italy" (1851 - 1852). In an interview with Elizabeth Barrett Browning at Florence, he contested her admiration for Napoleon III. He had known Thomas de Quincey, whose biography he contributed in 1878 to the "English Men of Letters" series, and he was a friend and admirer of Thomas Carlyle. In 1852 he was appointed a professor of English literature at University College, London, and for some years from 1858, he edited the newly established Macmillan's Magazine. In 1865 he was appointed to the chair of rhetoric and English literature at Edinburgh, and during the early years of his professorship actively promoted the movement for the university education of women. He also supported his wife Emily Rosaline Orme and two of their daughters in the women's suffrage movement, speaking at events in Edinburgh and London. In 1879 he became editor of the Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, and in 1886 gave the Rhind Lectures on that subject. In 1893 he was appointed Historiographer Royal for Scotland. Two years later he resigned his professorship. In 1896 he was President of the Edinburgh Sir Walter Scott Club and gave the Toast to Sir Walter at the club's annual dinner. By 1900 he was Chairman of the Scottish History Society.