Robert Fuller Murray was born Dec. 26, 1863, in Roxbury, Massachusetts, of John and Emmeline Murray. In 1869 John took his son to Kelso, England, and then to York. He was educated at grammar schools in Ilminster and in Crewkerne. Murray then attended his beloved University of St. Andrews from 1881, succeeding more in English than in classical Greek. Lacking other opportunities, he became a research assistant to Professor John M. D. Meiklejohn in 1886, published poems in popular journals, and took to journalism in Edinburgh briefly in mid-1889. He returned to St. Andrews in 1890, his consumption then pronounced. 1891 brought him two diversions, a brief visit to Egypt, and the publication of The Scarlet Gown, but Murray succumbed, not long afterwards, to the disease in St Andrews. His friend Andrew Lang carried his second volume of poems into print in 1894, the year of his death, and in 1909 the St. Andrews Students' Representative Council subvented a second edition of The Scarlet Gown, as Lang then said, "by piety."
Murray, Robert Fuller. The Scarlet Gown; being Verses by a St. Andrews Man. 2d edn. Intro. by Andrew Lang. Glasgow: James MacLehose, 1909. LE M9837sc Robarts Library
--. Robert F. Murray: his Poems. Memoir by Andrew Lang. London: Longmans, Green, 1894. PR 5101 M5A6 1894 Robarts Library
Born March 31, 1844, in Selkirk, Scotland, Andrew Lang was educated at Selkirk Grammar School, Edinburgh Academy, the University of St. Andrews, the University of Glasgow, and Balliol College, Oxford, from which he graduated with a B.A. (honours) in 1866. He took up a fellowship at Merton College in Oxford from 1868 to 1875, in which year he married Lenora Blanche Alleyne. Over his lifetime, Lang brought out nine books of verse, beginning with Ballads and Lyrics of Old France (1872), as well as translations of Homer and other classical poets. His writing career, however, expanded into journalism once he settled in London at his marriage. He wrote as anthropologist, historian, fairy story teller, literary historian, sportsman, novelist, and biographer and had a prolific output. Honours came his way readily: he received doctorates from St. Andrews University in 1888 and Oxford University in 1904, was a fellow in the British Academy, and presided over the Society for Psychical Research. Lang died, without children, of angina pectoris, July 20, 1912, in Aberdeen.
Demoor, Marysa. Friends over the ocean: Andrew Lang's American correspondents, 1881-1912. Gent: Rijksuniversiteit Gent, 1989. PR 4877 .A4 1989 Robarts Library
G., S. G. ""Lang, Andrew." Dictionary of National Biography 1912-21. 319-23.
Green, Roger Lancelyn. Andrew Lang, a critical biography, with a short-title bibliography of the works of Andrew Lang. Leicester: E. Ward, 1946. PR 4877 .G68. Robarts Library
Homer. The Homeric Hymns. Trans. Andrew Lang. London: Allen, 1899. PA 4025 .H8L3 1899. Robarts Library
--. The Iliad. Trans. Andrew Lang, Walter Leaf, and Ernest Myers. London: Macmillan, 1883. PA 4025 .A2L3 Institute of Mediaeval Studies
--. The Odyssey. Trans. Andrew Lang and Samuel Henry Butcher. London: Macmillan, 1887. PA 4205 .A5B8 1887 St. Michael's College
Lang, Andrew. Ballads and Lyrics of Old France, with Other Poems. London: Longmans, Green, 1872. PR 4876 .B29 1872. Robarts Library
--. Ballades and Verses Vain. New York: Scribner, 1884.
--. Ban and Arrière Ban: A Rally of Fugitive Rhymes. 2dn edn. London: Longmans, Green, 1894. PR 4876 .B3 1894 Robarts Library. Also Project Gutenberg.
--. Grass of Parnassus: Rhymes Old and New. London: Longmans, Green, 1888. PR 4876 .G7 1888. Robarts Library
--. Helen of Troy. New York: Scribner, 1882. PR 4876 .H4 1882. Robarts Library