William Scott Douglas, editor
William Scott Douglas, (10 January 1815 – 23 June 1883), an editor,
was born in Hawick, the son of Alexander Douglas and his wife,
Isabella Scott. He was educated at Heriot's Hospital, Edinburgh.
On 5 June 1862 he married Isabella Forbes, with whom he had at
least five children: William (b. 1863), Daniel (b. 1865), David
Gordon (b. 1868), Isabella Scott (b. 1873), and Jessie Irving (b.
1874). Sir William Scott
Douglas was his grandson.
Douglas worked as a mercantile accountant, like his
father before him, but in his leisure time he put much effort into
studying the life and works of Burns, acquiring perhaps a more
thorough mastery of them than any previous editor of Burns's works.
In 1850 he read a paper on the ‘Highland Mary’ incident of Burns's
life before the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. His principal
publications were a reissue of the Kilmarnock, ‘popular edition’ of
The Complete Poetical Works of Robert Burns with Memoir, &c (1871;
rev. edn, 1876); Descriptive Picture of the County of Ayr (1874);
and a splendid, six-volume library edition of The Works of Robert
Burns (1877–9). The poems in this edition are arranged
chronologically, and while it was the most sumptuous yet published
it was also the most complete and correct regarding both text and
notes. He also supplied letterpress for an edition of B. W.
Crombie's Modern Athenians, published in 1882. In 1877 he succeeded
James Ballantine as secretary of the Edinburgh Burns Club.
He was found, drowned, off the East Pier at Leith on 23 June 1883.
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