Author: Ross, James
Biography:
ROSS, James (1777?-1830: Blackwood’s Magazine)
He was, as his title pages state, a weaver in Forfar, Angus, but little else is known for certain. A death notice in Blackwood’s states that he was 46 at the time of his death, but that does not fit with Ross’s claim that his father died in the American War of Independence. If the age in Blackwood's is an error, he may have been the James Ross, who was born on 3 May 1777 to James Ross and his wife Margaret Fife who had married in Forfar on 22 June 1776. In Angus-shire Chaplet he says he “was sent early to school but was late to acquire knowledge.” His Peep at Parnassus is a vision-poem which, he says, exempts it from authorial responsibility and, therefore, criticism. He also wrote an essay on drunkenness but this has not been located. He died at Forfar on 3 July 1830. (BAM; ancestry.co.uk 16 Sept. 2020; findmypast.co.uk 16 Sept. 2020, 29 Sept. 2025; Blackwood's Magazine [1830], 574) SR