David Macpherson (26 October 1746 – 1 August 1816) was a Scottish historian.
The son of a tailor and clothier, Macpherson was born in Edinburgh, 26 October 1746.
Working in the UK and America, he was able to earn some money before 1790, about which time he settled with his wife and family in London making his living as a man of letters.
[1] Losing money through bad loans, Macpherson was occasionally in straitened circumstance from then on, but continued to write, encouraged by antiquarians such as Joseph Ritson and George Chalmers.
He edited Andrew Wyntoun's Orygynal Cronykil of Scotland, 2 vols., 1795; it was re-edited, in an enlarged form, by David Laing, for the Historians of Scotland series, 1879.