John Nichol (biographer)

John Nichol (8 September 1833 – 11 October 1894), was a Scottish literary academic, and the first Regius Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Glasgow.

John Jr. studied first at Glasgow (1848–55) and then Balliol College, Oxford (1855–9) as a Snell Exhibitioner, graduating with a First-Class degree in Classics, Philosophy and Mathematics.

With Albert Venn Dicey, Thomas Hill Green, Swinburne and others, he formed the Old Mortality Society for discussions on literary matters.

[1] Among the major works by Nichol were his drama Hannibal (1873), The Death of Themistocles, and other Poems (1881), his Byron in the "English Men of Letters" series (1880), his Robert Burns (1882) and Carlyle (1892).

[2] He visited the United States in 1865, and in 1882 he wrote the article on American literature for the ninth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.