William Spalding (writer)

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

William Spalding (1809–1859) was a Scottish writer and professor. He was born in Aberdeen to James Spalding and Frances Read and studied at the local grammar school and Marischal College. In 1830 he moved to Edinburgh to study law and was called to the bar in 1833. That year he published a piece on Shakespeare’s authorship that caught the attention of Francis Jeffrey, editor of the Edinburgh Review, and Spalding began writing for the magazine. He later contributed to Blackwood’s Magazine and helped with the eighth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, writing biographical articles on Addison, Bacon, Demosthenes, Scott and Tasso, as well as pieces on fable, fallacy, logic, rhetoric and slavery. He also wrote A concise History of English Literature (1853) and Italy and the Italian Islands from the Earliest Ages to the Present Time (1841).

Spalding’s academic career started at the University of Edinburgh as professor of rhetoric and belles lettres (1840–1845). He then became professor of logic, rhetoric and metaphysics at the University of St Andrews, where he remained until his death. He died in St Andrews and was buried near St Andrew’s Cathedral. He had married Agnes Frier in 1838, and they had a daughter, Mary Frances, who later married Henry Laurie, a Scottish philosopher who became a professor in Melbourne.