William Minto - Misplaced Pages

Scottish academic, critic, editor, journalist and novelist

William Minto (10 October 1845 – 1 March 1893) was a Scottish academic, critic, editor, journalist and novelist.

Life

Minto was born at Nether Auchintoul, near Alford, Aberdeenshire. He was son of James Minto, a farmer, and his wife Barbara Copland.

He was educated at the University of Aberdeen, graduating as an M.A. in 1865 and "winning the leading prizes in mathematics, classics and philosophy". In 1866 he began studying at Merton College, Oxford, but left the following year without taking a degree.

He became assistant professor under Alexander Bain, who held the Regius Chair of Logic and the Regius Chair of English Literature at the University of Aberdeen. During this period he wrote the book, Manual of English Prose Literature, Biographical and Critical, which was published in 1872 and which was "distinguished by sound judgment and sympathetic appreciation".

In 1873 Minto moved to London and from 1874 to 1878 he contributed literary and political articles to The Examiner, and later he was on the leader-writing staff of The Daily News and The Pall Mall Gazette. During this period Minto "was considered to be an able and pungent critic of Lord Beaconsfield's imperial policies".

In 1880 Bain retired and Minto succeeded him as Regius Professor of Logic and English Literature at Aberdeen, a post he held until his death. "Though Logic and Rhetoric had long been combined in a single Chair at the Scottish universities, Minto's occupancy of the Chair was marked by a much great emphasis on the study and teaching of literature than logic."

Works written by Minto

Nonfiction

Manual of English Prose Literature (1872)
Characteristics of English Poets from Chaucer to Shirley (1874)
Logic: Inductive and Deductive (1893)
Daniel Defoe in the "English Men of Letters" series (Macmillan, 1879)
University Extension Manual on Logic (1893)
Plain Principles of Prose Composition (1893)
English Literature under the Georges (1894); republished, with a biographical introduction by William Knight, as The Literature of the Georgian Era (1895).

Fiction

The Crack of Doom (1886) – a science fiction novel
The Mediation of Ralph Hardelot (1888) – a historical novel set during the Peasants' Revolt
Was She Good or Bad? (1889) – a humorous novel of modern manners

Articles

Numerous articles on literary subjects (including Lord Byron, Geoffrey Chaucer, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe and William Wordsworth) in the 9th edition (1875–89) of the Encyclopædia Britannica and reprinted in the tenth edition (1902).
Articles on Thomas Dekker, John Dryden, John Stuart Mill, Alexander Pope, Sir Walter Scott, Edmund Spenser, Sir Richard Steele, Laurence Sterne, and William Wordsworth that were partly authored by Minto were published in the eleventh edition (1911) of the Encyclopædia Britannica and acknowledged as such at the end of each article.

Works edited by Minto

Sir Walter Scott, Lay of the Last Minstrel, Oxford, 1886
Sir Walter Scott, Lady of the Lake, 1891
Sir Walter Scott, Poetical works of Sir Walter Scott, Bart., 1887
Autobiographical Notes of the Life of William Bell Scott, 1892

Family

On 8 January 1880 Minto married Cornelia Beatrice, daughter of the Rev. Lewis Griffiths, rector of Swindon, Gloucestershire. His health began to decline in 1891. A trip to Greece gave him some respite but he died of his ailments on 1 March 1893.

He had two sons, William and Charles. On 2 July 1919 the elder son, Lt. Col. William Bain Griffiths Minto, "died of injuries received while firing peace salute at Aberdeen".

References

Alexander Mackie and Sayoni Basu, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, "Minto, William (1845–1893), literary scholar" entry. Retrieved 17 April 2017.
^ Trevor Royle, The Mainstream Companion to Scottish Literature, London: The Macmillan Press, 1983; republished as an ebook by Mainstream Publishing Company (Edinburgh) Ltd., 1993, "Minto, William" entry.
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Minto, William". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 18 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 564.
William Minto 1845–1893, International Association for Scottish Philosophy, scottishphilosophy.org. Retrieved 17 April 2017.
William Minto, The Literature of the Georgian Era, New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1895; published online on archive.org. Retrieved 17 April 2017.
Authors: Minto, William, Science Fiction Encyclopedia, sf-encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 17 April 2017.
^ John Sutherland, The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1990. ISBN 9780804718424 (pp. 436-437)
Important Contributors to the Britannica, 9th and 10th Editions, 1902encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 17 April 2017.
"William Minto", en.wikisource.org. Retrieved 17 April 2017.
Scott: Lady of the Lake, edited with a preface and notes by W. Minto, M.A. With a map of Scott's Lake District. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1891 (Clarendon Press Series).
Catalog record: Poetical works of Sir Walter Scott, Bart., hathitrust.org. Retrieved 17 April 2017.
"Minto, William" . Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
"Royal Aberdeen Golf Club war memorial 1914-1919 - photo req", The Scottish Military Research Group - Commemorations Project, http://warmemscot.s4.bizhat.com. Retrieved 17 April 2017.
Our History, stmaryscardenplace.org.uk. Retrieved 17 April 2017.

Attribution:

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Minto, William". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.

External links

Works by or about William Minto at Wikisource
William Minto on SF Encyclopedia.
Works by William Minto at Project Gutenberg
Works by or about William Minto at the Internet Archive
Works by William Minto at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)

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