John Wilson aka Christopher North (1785-1854)
The other John Wilson from Glasgow’s literary history was less-known than ‘Christopher North’. Born in Lanarkshire, Wilson (1720-1789) is remembered for his five-act tragedy Earl Douglas (1760), which seems imitative of John Home’s successful play Douglas (1756). His topographical poem The Clyde (1764) is one in a long list of Glaswegian musings on the famous river.
Matriculating at the University of Glasgow in 1797, the better-remembered Wilson went on to enjoy an influential course of lectures, especially those by John Young, Professor of Greek. At the age of seventeen, Wilson sent a letter to William Wordsworth praising his famous Lyrical Ballads (1798). Wordsworth was evidently impressed with Wilson’s comments, and replied with a long letter of thanks.
Wilson’s first collection, The Isle of Palms and other Poems (1812), was published by John Smith in Glasgow, and follows in the tradition of ‘the lake poets’ William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey and Thomas de Quincey - all of whom became close friends with Wilson. His other collected works were The Magic Mirror (1812), a poem addressed to Sir Walter Scott, and The City of Plague (1816).
He was heavily involved in the famous Edinburgh magazine Blackwoods, writing and editing for it from its launch in 1817 until 1852. During this period, Wilson was elected Professor of Moral Philosophy and Political Economy at the University of Edinburgh (1820), with the help of support-letters written by, among others, Sir Walter Scott. These Edinburgh activities have in a sense removed Wilson from Glasgow’s purview, although, as with many other literary men, formative years in Glasgow should be remembered.