James Cuthbertson

Who was James Cuthbertson?

James Lister Cuthbertson was a Scottish-Australian poet and schoolteacher.

James Cuthbertson was born in Glasgow, Scotland, the eldest son of William Gilmour Cuthbertson and his wife, Jane Agnes Cuthbertson. James was educated at the secondary school, Trinity College, Glenalmond, Perthshire, where he played on the school cricket team. He studied for the Indian civil service, and having been admitted as a probationer went on to Merton College, University of Oxford, England. He failed to pass a necessary examination and was obliged to abandon the idea of a career in India. His father had become manager of the Bank of South Australia at Adelaide, and in 1874 Cuthbertson decided to go to Australia also.

In 1875 Cuthbertson joined the staff of the Geelong Grammar School as classical master under the pretense that he had completed his degree at Oxford. He founded the School Quarterly, to which he contributed many poems, and the first collection of these was published at Geelong under the title Grammar School Verses in 1879, an exceedingly rare little pamphlet not listed in the bibliographies of either Serle or Miller.