John Davidson

John Davidson (11 April 1857 – 23 March 1909) was a Scottish poet, playwright and novelist, best known for his ballads. He also did translations from French. In 1909, financial difficulties, as well as physical and mental health problems, led to his suicide.

He was born at Barrhead, East Renfrewshire as the son of Alexander Davidson, an Evangelical Union minister and Helen née Crocket of Elgin. His strict Protestant upbringing deeply influenced the type of man and writer he would become. Harold Herbert Williams writes: "Like Carlyle he was a protagonist of the actual, for in boyhood he had been trained in the strictest sect of the Calvinists, and like Carlyle he spent half his life buffeting the universe as a Calvinist without dogma."

His family removed to Greenock in 1862 where he was educated at Highlanders' Academy there and entered the chemical laboratory of Walker's Sugarhouse refinery in his 13th year, returning after one year to school as a pupil teacher. Davidson also briefly worked in the Public Analysts' Office, from 1870 to 1871. In these employments he developed an interest in science which became an important characteristic of his poetry. In 1872 he returned for four years to the Highlanders' Academy as a pupil-teacher, and, after a year at University of Edinburgh (1876–77), received in 1877 his first scholastic employment at Alexander's Charity, Glasgow. During the next six years he held positions in the following schools: Perth Academy (1878–81), Kelvinside Academy, Glasgow (1881–82), and Hutchinson's Charity, Paisley (1883–84). He varied his career by spending a year as clerk in a Glasgow thread firm (1884–85), and subsequently taught in Morrison's Academy, Crieff (1885–88), and in a private school at Greenock (1888–89).