- Robert Mudie
ROBERT MUDIE (1777-1842) was a self-educated writer, artist, and naturalist. He was a native of Forfarshire,Scotland. He wrote and compiled altogether about ninety volumes, including Babylon the Great, a Picture of Men and Things in London ; Modern Auicus, a sketch of Edinburgh society; The British Naturalist; The Feathered Tribes of Great Britain; A Popular Guide to the Observation of Nature; two series of four volumes each, entitled The Heavens, the Earth, the Sea, and the Air; and Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter; Man: Physical, Moral, Social, and Intellectual; Man, as a Moral and Accountable Being; The World Described; The Picture of Australia. He also wrote a novel, Glenfergus. He furnished the letter-press to Gilbert's Modern Atlas, the "Natural History" to the British Cyclopaedia, and numerous other contributions to periodical works. He was editor of the Caledonian Quarterly Magazine, as well as its illustrator and chief contributor. He hand-carved the woodcuts used to illustrate the Caledonian Quarterly.
He taught himself Latin by beginning in the middle of Virgil, reading to the end, using a dictionary.
Although in later years he removed to London (where he ultimately passed away in penury), he was for a time Rector of the Dundee Academy (one of a set of lower colleges founded by King James VI in Perth, Dundee, Inverness, and one or two other towns, distant from the Scottish Universities) and was also its art master. He achieved this not without adversity-- his parents removed him from school at age twelve and put him to the loom.
His second wife was Frances Wallace Urquhart, second daughter of Captain John Urquhart, a sea captain of East India House.
Sources
Cyclopaedia of English Literature, by Robert Chambers, p. 700 (1884).
Scottish Notes and Queries - Page 257, by Martim de Albuquerque - 1861
July 1822 edition of The Edinburgh Magazine and Literary Miscellany at page 140.
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 1822, page 768
The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British and Foreign India ... - Page 629 - 1822
Of Modern English Literary Men, the United States Democratic Review, Cornell University, April 1, 1839.
http://books.google.com/books?id=spkgAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA257&lpg=PA257&dq=%22robert+mudie 22+art+dundee&source=web&ots=f-qoIdMqJA&sig=0UH1_4F-qSfJUvaX_TO8vHm42cA&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=10&ct=result
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=AnEFAAAAQAAJ&dq=%22robert+mudie 22+naturalist&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=SHE5yEXcfg&sig=fQmY1BJsltxfcsipsTzks1n_N0U&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result
http://books.google.com/books?id=uxEOAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA2&dq=%22robert+mudie%22+frances+wallace#PPA2,M1
http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/pageviewer?frames=1&coll=moa&view=50&root=%2Fmoa%2Fusde%2Fusde0014%2F&tif=00510.TIF
See also www.amazon.com (search for Robert Mudie), www.abebooks.com, or www.bookfinder.com for a list of his available volumes..
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