author

Andrew James Symington

1825–1898

A Scottish poet, biographer, and antiquary whose books ranged from verse to literary lives, he brought a curious, wide-reading mind to everything he wrote. Best known today for works like Pen and Pencil Sketches of Faröe and Iceland, he moved easily between travel, criticism, and poetry.

1 Audiobook

Pen and pencil sketches of Faröe and Iceland : With an appendix containing translations from the Icelandic and 51 illustrations engraved on wood by W. J. Linton

Pen and pencil sketches of Faröe and Iceland : With an appendix containing translations from the Icelandic and 51 illustrations engraved on wood by W. J. Linton

by Andrew James Symington

About the author

Born in Paisley on July 27, 1825, Andrew James Symington was educated at grammar school and then entered the Glasgow business world with his family. Alongside that commercial life, he built a literary career as a poet, translator, biographer, and antiquary, with interests that stretched from Scottish culture to European literature and travel.

His books show an unusually broad range. He wrote poetry, including Genevieve, and Other Poems, and also produced biographical studies of major writers such as William Wordsworth, Thomas Moore, Samuel Lover, and William Cullen Bryant. He is also remembered for Pen and Pencil Sketches of Faröe and Iceland, a travel book that reflects both his eye for landscape and his love of literary and historical detail.

Symington died in 1898. Although he is not among the best-known Victorian authors now, his work offers a lively glimpse of the 19th-century reader-writer: practical in everyday life, but deeply drawn to books, places, and the lives of other authors.