James Aikman

Born in Bo’ness, West Lothian, on December 13, 1779, he was apprenticed to the Edinburgh bookseller Peter Hill and later ran his own business from Charles Street in Edinburgh. He also helped publish the Edinburgh Star with his brother Andrew in the early 1800s.

He seems to have moved easily between literature and history. Bibliographic records link him to several books of verse as well as historical works including The History of Scotland (translated from George Buchanan), Annals of the Persecution in Scotland, and An Historical Account of Covenanting in Scotland. A later note in The Bookseller and the Stationery Trades’ Journal, as summarized by the University of Toronto’s Jackson Bibliography, also remembered him as a historian who published poems.

He lived for many years in Edinburgh and died at home there on May 21, 1860. No confirmed portrait was found on the sources reviewed, so a profile image is not included here.