Edinburgh University

• Barr, Debra, and Walter Meyer zu Erpen. "Albert Durrant Watson," in Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Vol. XV. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005. 1058-59.
• Watson, Albert Durrant. Dream of God: A Poem. Toronto: Banner Press, 1922.
• --. Heart of the Hills. Toronto: McClelland, Goodchild, and Stewart, 1917. Internet Archive.
• --. Love and the Universe: The Immortals, and Other Poems. Toronto: Macmillan, 1913. PR9199.3 .W37 L6 Victoria Canadiana
• --. Poetical Works. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1924. PS8545 .A83 A17 1924
• --. The Wing of the Wild Bird and Other Poems. Toronto: William Briggs, 1908. Internet Archive.
• --. Woman: a Poem. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1923.

• Sambrook, James. "Thomson, James (1700–1748)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. May 2008.

• Mehew, Ernest. "Stevenson, Robert Louis (1850–1894)."Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Oxford: OUP, 2004.

Thomas Pringle was born January 5, 1789, in Blaiklaw, Roxburghshire, and educated at Kelso and afterwards, in 1805, at Edinburgh University. He became clerk, Commissioner of the Public Records of Scotland, and co-editor, Edinburgh Monthly Magazine and Constable's Magazine, in 1817. He married Margaret Brown on July 19 in that year and published his first book of poems, The Autumnal Excursion, in 1819. When he was 30 years old, they led a party including his brother, father, and stepmother, and her sister, to South Africa. They departed on February 18, 1820, and arrived on June 29 at Eildon Kloof, close to present Glen Lynden district. After the settlement had laid down good roots, he went to Cape Town in September 1822 to become Government Librarian. By 1824 he had become co-editor of the South African Commercial Advertiser and had opened a school. Two years later he left South Africa for London, where he did literary work and served as Secretary to the Anti-Slavery Society until his death on December 5, 1834. He is buried in Bunhill Fields, London. In those final years Pringle saw a half dozen of his poems published in George Thompson's Travels and Adventures (1827). One reader was Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who wrote Pringle that he believed his poem, "Afar in the Desert," was one of the "two or three most perfect lyric Poems" in English. Pringle brought out a second book of poems, Ephemerides, in 1828, and at last a major book, African Sketches (1834), which brought together his (often revised) poems and a narrative of his residence in South Africa.

• African Poems of Thomas Pringle, ed. Ernest Pereira and Michael Chapman (Durban: University of Natal Press, 1989). PR 5190 P3A57 1989 Robarts Library
• Doyle, John Robert. Thomas Pringle (New York: Twayne, 1972). PR 5190 P3Z6 Robarts Library
• Marchand, Marion. Index to the Poems of Thomas Pringle 1789-1834 (School of Librarianship, University of Witwatersrand, 1960).
• Meiring, Jane. Thomas Pringle: His Life and Times. Cape Town: A. A. Balkema, 1968. DT 844 .2 P7M3 Robarts Library
• Pringle, Thomas. African Sketches (London: Edward Moxon, 1834). 010097.e.63 British Library
• --. The Autumnal Excursion, or, Sketches in Teviotdale; with Other Poems (Edinburgh: Constable, 1819).
• --. Ephemerides, or, Occasional poems, written in Scotland and South Africa (London: Smith, Elder, 1828). Victoria University Rare Books no. 105
• --. Glen-Lynden: A Tale of Teviotdale (London: Smith, Elder, 1828).
• -- and Robert Story. The Institute: A Heroic Poem in Four Cantos (Edinburgh: W. McWilliam, 1811).
• Thomas Pringle: His Life, Times, and Poems, ed. William Hay (Cape Town: J. C. Juta, 1912). 11611.l.16 British Library

Poet, translator, novelist, and man of letters, John Davidson spent the first part of his life as a teacher in Greenock, Glasgow, Perth, Crieff, and other places. In 1884 he married Margaret Macarthur, who bore him two sons. In 1899 he moved to London and earned a living by journalism. His second and third volumes of verse, Fleet Street Eclogues (1893), proved popular, established his reputation, and earned the respect of T. S. Eliot, who wrote a preface to a selection of Davidson's poems in 1961 edited by Maurice Lindsay (PR 4525 D5A17 1961 Robarts Library). Little after these books, whether poetry, novels, or translations, did well, and Davidson moved depended on his friends for support until getting a Civil List pension in 1906 and moving to Penzance a year later. The last half of his literary career was devoted to unsuccessful philosophical poems and tragedies promoting a new world order. Depressed and ill, Davidson committed suicide March 23, 1909, but his body was only found on the seashore months later. He was buried at sea on September 21, 1909. The best modern edition of his Poems is edited by Andrew Turnbull (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1973; PR 4525 D5A17 1973B Robarts Library). The best life is John Sloan's John Davidson, First of the Moderns (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995; PR 4525 D5Z82 Robarts Library).

Thomas Carlyle was born on December 4, 1795. After attending Annan Academy and Edinburgh University, he taught mathematics for a time before finding his vocation as one of the foremost essayists, biographers, and historians of his century. At first he devoted himself to introducing German literature into English in translation, but his reputation stands on his original prose: Sartor Resartus (1834), History of the French Revolution (1837), Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic (1840), Past and Present (1843), and Frederick the Great (1858-65). The little poetry he published was composed before 1840 and appears as an appendix in his volumes of essays, but they have a popularity far greater than their number or their academic rating would suggest. The death of his life-long partner and wife, Jane Welsh, in 1866 brought an end to his great writing. Carlyle died on February 5, 1881, and is buried at Ecclefechan.

• Carlyle, Thomas. "Appendix." Critical and Miscellaneous Essays. Vol. I. London: Chapman and Hall, 1872. [the poems]
• --. Works. Ed. H. D. Traill. 30 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1897-99.
• Kaplan, Fred. Thomas Carlyle: A Biography. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983. PR 4433 K3
• Kaplan, Fred. “Carlyle, Thomas (1795-1881).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004.
• Tarr, Rodger L. Thomas Carlyle: A Descriptive Bibliography. University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989. Z 8147 T38 Robarts Library