William Alexander |
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William Alexander was born in Chapel of Garioch, Aberdeenshire, on 12 June 1826. His education was rudimentary, and he worked as a farmhand until losing a leg in an accident when he was twenty. He then became a journalist for the Aberdeen Free Press, and it was this newspaper which serialised his novel "Johnny Gibb of Gushetneuk", a work which gained immediate popularity and was published in volume form in 1871. Alexander eventually became editor of the paper, serialising five other novels between 1852 and 1877, including his "Ravenshowe and the Residenters Therein". These were not published in volume form however, and for a long time after his death on 19 February 1894 Alexander's literary reputation rested soley on "Johnny Gibb". The other novels have only recently begun to be published, and the reputation of this writer who shunned self-publicity a little too effectively is now undergoing some reassessment.
Andrew Crumey
Johnny Gibb of Gushetneuk (1871); Sketches of Life Among my Ain Folk (1875); Notes and Sketches (1876); Twenty-Five Years: a Personal Retrospect (1878); with J. G. Mackie: Memoir of the Late Andrew Jervie, (1879); Mrs Garden: a Memorial Sketch (1887); The Making of Aberdeenshire (1888); The Laird of Drammochdyle (1986); Rural Life in Victorian Aberdeenshire (1992); My Uncle The Baillie (1995).
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