William Ogilvie of Pittensear

Who was William Ogilvie of Pittensear?

William Ogilvie of Pittensear FRSE FSA, known as the rebel professor, was a Scottish classicist, numismatist and author of an influential historic land reform treatise. Published in London in 1781, An Essay on the Right of Property in Land was issued anonymously, necessarily it seems in a revolutionary age.

Along with John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Thomas Paine, Adam Smith and others—Ogilvie is seen as a leading proto-Georgist thinker. His masterwork was republished in 1838, then in 1891 as the heart and subject of a much larger new work titled Birthright in Land, and in more recent years has been republished twice in modern, further expanded editions, using that same title. Ogilvie is cited as an influence by reformers internationally.