Rosaline Masson

Born in 1867, Rosaline Masson came from a notably literary and politically active Edinburgh family. Her father, David Masson, was a professor of rhetoric and literature at the University of Edinburgh and an editor of Macmillan’s Magazine, while her mother, Emily Rosaline Orme, was involved in the women’s suffrage movement. Rosaline and her sister Flora also supported women’s suffrage.

Masson was a remarkably wide-ranging writer. She published short-story collections including My Poor Niece and Other Stories and A Departure from Tradition and Other Stories, novels such as In Our Town and Nina, and contributed articles to publications including Cornhill, Blackwood’s Magazine, Chambers’s Journal, and The Scotsman.

She is especially remembered for her historical and biographical writing. Her books included Scotland the Nation as well as studies of William Wordsworth and Robert Louis Stevenson, showing a talent for making literary and national history accessible to general readers. She died in 1949.