Author: Wilson, Alexander
Biography:
WILSON, Alexander (1766-1813: ODNB)
Ornithologist and writer. He was born at Paisley to Mary (McNab) and Alexander Wilson, a weaver, illicit distiller, and smuggler. He attended the Paisley grammar school but after his mother’s death when he was nine and his father’s remarriage, he was sent to work on a farm. In 1779 he was apprenticed to his brother-in-law, a weaver; although he disliked the work, he completed his apprenticeship and worked as a journeyman for more than a year. During this period he both read and wrote poetry and, like many Scottish poets, was inspired by the example of Robert Burns (q.v.). For three years he worked as a foot pedlar; some of his poems and his journal recount his experiences. In 1790 he was prosecuted for libel because of his short poem, The Hollander, or Light Weight; it is unclear what was the result of this prosecution. However, through his involvement with an organisation to improve the working conditions of weavers, he published The Shark in 1793 and this poem led to his imprisonment in the Paisley tolbooth. When another brief imprisonment followed in 1794, Wilson and his nephew, William Duncan, decided to emigrate to America. They landed in Delaware in July 1794. In America Wilson worked successively as a weaver, pedlar, and teacher. He became an American citizen in 1804. Eventually he settled in Pennsylvania where his friendship with a neighbour, William Bartram, a botanist, nurtured his growing interest in ornithology and in drawing birds (which he shot in order to study). From 1806 he worked as an editor on an American encyclopedia and he began preparing drawings and text for his massive American Ornithology (nine volumes, 1808-14). At the time, it was the most substantial publication by any American author and, with its many plates, was an inspiration to John James Audubon. Wilson travelled the country soliciting subscriptions; Thomas Jefferson, with whom Wilson corresponded, subscribed. Seven volumes had been advertised and published by the time of Wilson’s death from dysentery in Philadelphia. He was interred in the burial ground of the Swedish church in Philadelphia. His “Watty and Meg” was published anonymously as a chapbook in Edinburgh in 1792 and assumed by many to be by Burns. (Alexander B. Grosart, The Poetry and Prose of Alexander Wilson [1876]; ODNB 17 Dec. 2020; “To Thomas Jefferson from Alexander Wilson, 30 September 1805,” Founders Online 17 Dec. 2020; Clark Hunter, The Life and Letters of Alexander Wilson [1983])
Other Names:
- A. Wilson