Author: Aytoun, William Edmondstoune
Biography:
AYTOUN, William Edmondstoune (1813-1865: ODNB)
Journalist and poet. He was born on 21 June 1813 at Edinburgh to Roger Aytoun and his wife Joan Keir, both prominent figures in Edinburgh cultural and literary society. (Through his father he was descended from the Edmondstoune family.) After study at the Edinburgh Academy and the University of Edinburgh (1828-1833), he spent a year travelling on the continent. He became a Writer to the Signet in 1835 and was called to the Scottish Bar in 1840. From 1836 he contributed to Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, specializing in humorous reviews, satire, and parodies (his 1854 parody Firmilian, which developed from a Blackwood’s review, dealt a death-blow to the popular “spasmodic school of poetry”). In 1845 he was appointed Professor of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres at the University of Edinburgh where his lively lectures were credited with greatly increasing the popularity of English literature as a course of study. He also continued with his legal work and, in 1852, he was appointed Sheriff to Orkney and Shetland. He married Jane Emily, the daughter of Professor John Wilson (q.v.), on 11 Apr. 1849. After her death in 1859, his health deteriorated; he lived only two years after a second marriage, to Fearne Jemima Kinnear, on 24 Dec. 1863. He died at home at Black Hill house, Elgin, Moray, on 4 Aug. 1865 and was buried in the Dean cemetery, Edinburgh. Of his serious verse, the best-known is his Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers (1849). (ODNB 22 Jan. 2018; ancestry.co.uk 15 Feb. 2025; LPS) SR
Other Names:
- W. E. Aytoun