Author: Maxwell, Stuart
Biography:
MAXWELL, Stuart (1783-1824: Literary History of Galloway)
pseudonym Henry Stobert
Born at New-Abbey, Kirkcudbright, he was the youngest son of Captain James Maxwell and his wife, Elizabeth (Maxwell) Maxwell. The family moved to Newton-Stewart where he was educated but his parents died when he was just eleven and he moved to London with a brother where he joined the military academy at Woolwich. He obtained his first commission in 1796; his long and distinguished military career was mostly spent abroad, including in Sicily where he witnessed the eruption of Mount Etna described in Chinzica. He was made brevit-major in 1814. From 1816 he travelled in Europe because of poor health, with brief periods spent in England and Scotland. He died at Pau, France. In 1822 he had written to Scott asking him to intercede with Archibald Constable for a second edition of his Chinzica; Scott obliged but wrote to Constable that publication “is only leading the gentleman otherwise a man of sense & perhaps accomplishment into an idle delusion.” (Thomas Murray, Literary History of Galloway [1832]; Letters of Walter Scott 7.360)