William Spalding

Who was William Spalding?

William Spalding was a Scottish writer and academic. For the last twenty years of his life he served as professor of rhetoric and logic, in addition to authoring essays, reviews and historical texts.

Born in Aberdeen, to advocate James Spalding and his wife, Frances Read, young William was educated in the city's grammar school and at Marischal College. Moving to Edinburgh in 1830, he read law and was called to the bar in 1833. In that year he published a Letter on Shakespeare's Authorship of the Two Noble Kinsmen, which attracted the notice of leading literary critic Francis Jeffrey, who invited Spalding to contribute to the Edinburgh Review. Having devoted much time to studying Shakespeare and other Elizabethan dramatists, he continued to write on these topics for the Review. His other writings included contributions to Blackwood's Magazine and the eighth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, which contains his biographical entries on Joseph Addison, Francis Bacon, Demosthenes, Sir Walter Scott and Torquato Tasso as well as articles on fable, fallacy, logic, rhetoric and slavery. He also authored a concise History of English Literature, published in 1853.