Robert Wallace

Born near Cupar, Fife, on June 24, 1831, he was educated at St Andrews and built a strikingly wide-ranging career. Over the years he worked as a classics teacher, minister, university professor, newspaper editor, barrister, and finally Member of Parliament for Edinburgh East.

Alongside public life, he was known as a writer and man of letters. His background across education, religion, journalism, and politics helps explain the breadth and seriousness associated with his work.

He died on June 6, 1899. Later reference sources remembered him not only as a politician, but as a writer whose life crossed several of the major intellectual and public worlds of nineteenth-century Scotland and Britain.