Alexander Nicolson

With an early education from tutors, he entered Edinburgh University after the death of his father, intending to study for the ministry of the Free Church of Scotland.

[1] Giving up theology while at the Free Church College, Nicholson for some time worked as one of the sub-editors of the eighth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.

For a year he edited an advanced Liberal paper, the Daily Express, which later was merged into the Caledonian Mercury.

With little practice, for ten years he reported law cases for the Scottish Jurist, of which he became editor.

[1] In 1865 Nicolson was appointed assistant commissioner by the Scottish education commission, in which capacity he visited widely in the Western Isles, inspected their schools, and reported in a detailed blue-book.

In 1872 he accepted the office of sheriff-substitute of Kirkcudbright, declining the offer of the Celtic chair in Edinburgh University, set up largely by his own efforts and those of John Stuart Blackie.

[2] During the tour of investigation the gunboat HMS Lively, with the commissioners on board, sank off Stornoway, and he had some difficulty in saving the manuscript of his Memoirs of Adam Black, on which he was working at the time.

His main publications were:[1] Nicolson also edited in 1857 a volume Edinburgh Essays, written by a number of his friends connected with the university.