David Masson

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David Masson - portrait by William Hole

David Masson (December 2, 1822 – October 6, 1907), was a Scottish writer.

He was born in Aberdeen, and educated at the grammar school there and at Marischal College. 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 purely 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 went to London, where he found wider scope for his energy and knowledge.

He was secretary (1851-1852) of the "Society of the Friends of Italy." In a famous 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 an enthusiastic friend and admirer of Thomas Carlyle. In 1852 he was appointed professor of English literature at University College, London, in succession to AH Clough, and from 1858 to 1865 be edited the newly established Macmillan's Magazine. In 1865 he was selected for 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. In 1879 he became editor of the Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, and in 1893 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.

A bust of Masson was presented to the senate of the university of Edinburgh in 1897. Professor Masson had married Rosaline Orme. Their son, David Orme Masson, became the first Professor of Chemistry at the University of Melbourne, and their daughter Rosaline was known as a writer and novelist.

[edit] Works

His magnum opus is his Life of Milton in Connexion with the History of His Own Time in six volumes, the first of which appeared in 1858 and the last in 1880. He also edited the library edition of Milton's Poetical Works (3 vols., 1874), and De Quincey's Collected Works (14 vols., 1889-1890). Among his other publications are

Essays, Biographical and Critical (1856, reprinted with additions, 3 vols., 1874)
British Novelists and their Styles (1859)
Drummond of Hawthornden (1873)
Chatterton (1873)
Edinburgh Sketches (1892)