Author: Dunbar, James
Biography:
DUNBAR, James (1742-98: ancestry.co.uk)
Caledonia was published anonymously but its attribution to James Dunbar, based on a manuscript note on the title page of one copy, is doubtless correct. The ODNB entry includes no information about his birth and origins but he can be identified from the records of King’s College, Aberdeen. He was the second son of Alexander Dunbar, Laird of Boath in Nairnshire, Scotland, and his wife Janet Brodie. His parents had married in Auldearn (a village near Boath) on 24 Mar. 1737, and James Dunbar was born on 7 Aug. 1742. He was educated at King’s College and graduated LLD. He was appointed as a lecturer in moral philosophy on 27 Mar. 1765 and became a regent in Mar. 1766. Dunbar was a member of the Aberdeen Philosophical Society. The preface to Caledonia states that the poem was based on a visit made to Invergarry and the highlands in 1771. His De primordiis civitatum oratio in qua agitur de bello civili inter Magnam Britanniam was published in 1779 and was followed by Essays on the History of Mankind in Rude and Cultivated Ages in 1780. Both were issued by Thomas Cadell who also published Caledonia. Dunbar retired from King’s College on 11 Apr. 1794. He died in his college rooms on 28 May 1798 and was buried in Old Machar, Aberdeen, on 31 May. (ODNB 18 Aug. 2024; ancestry.co.uk 18 Aug. 2024; findmypast.co.uk 18 Aug. 2024; P. J. Anderson, Officers and Graduates of University and King’s College, Aberdeen [1893]; H. L. Ulman, The Minutes of the Aberdeen Philosophical Society, 1758-73 [1990]) SR