John Skelton

Edinburgh, 1831 - 1897, Edinburgh

BiographyLC name authority no95025884
LC Heading:Skelton, John, Sir, 1831-1897

Biography:
Skelton, Sir John [pseud. Shirley] (1831–1897), writer, was born in Edinburgh on 18 July 1831, the only son of James Skelton of Sandford Newton, writer to the signet and sheriff-substitute at Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, and his wife, Margaret, née Kinnear. He was educated at the universities of St Andrews and Edinburgh, and in 1854 he was admitted a member of the Faculty of Advocates. However, his interests lay in literature more than in law and he started contributing essays and reviews to Fraser's Magazine under the pseudonym of Shirley, from Charlotte Brontë's novel of that name. He had previously received a letter from her for his critical notice of Jane Eyre. In 1857 he contributed an essay on ‘Early English life in drama’ to a volume of Edinburgh Essays and was a regular contributor to The Guardian, a short-lived Edinburgh periodical, and formed an acquaintance with the editor of Fraser's, James Anthony Froude. In 1862 his first independent publication, Nugae criticae, was published, a collection of essays which had appeared in various magazines, and in the same year he attempted a political romance, Thalatta, or, The Great Commoner, a sketch of a character combining resemblances to both Canning and Disraeli. With his friend William Ellis Gloag, a Scottish judge, he also edited the second edition of Dickson's Treatise on the Law of Evidence (1864). In 1865 he edited and published, anonymously, a collection of verse entitled Spring Songs. On 30 July 1867 he married Anne Adair Lawrie (b. 1846/7), daughter of James Adair Lawrie, professor of surgery at Glasgow. Among their children was the politician Noel Skelton.

When the Scottish Board of Supervision, which administered the laws respecting the poor and public health, was reconstituted in 1868, Skelton was appointed secretary by Disraeli. It was said that the choice was due to Disraeli's admiration of his literary work. Within a year Skelton published anonymously a sympathetic sketch of his patron, entitled Benjamin Disraeli: the Past and the Future ... by a Democratic Tory (1868). His earliest official work had been to administer the Public Health Act of 1867, and to aid its operations he published an edition of the act with notes. In 1876 he published another official work of authority, The Boarding-out of Pauper Children in Scotland. The Handbook of Public Health (1890–91) and The Local Government (Scotland) Act in Relation to Public Health (1890) were valuable contributions to official literature.

Meanwhile Skelton was confirming his literary reputation. His connection with Blackwood's Magazine started in 1869 and lasted throughout his life. In 1876 he published his first contribution to the controversy concerning Mary Stuart, entitled The Impeachment of Mary Stuart, in which he espoused the cause of the unfortunate queen. This was followed by Essays in Romance and Studies from Life (1883), Maitland of Lethington and the Scotland of Mary Stuart (1887–8), his most elaborate historical work, and Mary Stuart (1893), in all of which he defended Mary against her accusers with ability and careful restraint. In his historical work he characteristically displayed something of the spirit of the advocate. His descriptive powers are seen in his graphic rendering of life at Peterhead in The Crookit Meg: a Story of One Year (1880), originally serialized in Fraser's Magazine. Of Skelton's more purely literary works the best-known are the Essays of Shirley (1882) and The Table Talk of Shirley (1895), of which a second series was issued in 1896 under the title Summers and Winters at Balmawhapple. The table talk consisted chiefly of reminiscences of Froude, Dante Rossetti, and other personal friends or literary contemporaries. Quaint, almost eccentric, in treatment, Skelton's essays were popular with authors as different as Carlyle, Thackeray, Huxley, and Rossetti.

In 1878 Skelton received the honorary degree of LLD from Edinburgh University; he was created CB in 1887, and KCB in 1897. He retained the post of secretary to the Board of Supervision until 1892, when he was elected chairman. In 1894, when the board was replaced by the Scottish Local Government Board, Skelton became vice-president of the new body. He finally retired on 31 March 1897, when the board recorded in a minute its sense of Skelton's services in diminishing pauperism throughout Scotland. Skelton died on 19 July 1897 at his home, Hermitage of Braid, Edinburgh, survived by his wife and several children.

[Anon.], rev. Sayoni Basu
([Anon.], ‘Skelton, Sir John (1831–1897)’, rev. Sayoni Basu, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://proxy.bostonathenaeum.org:2055/view/article/25662, accessed 8 March 2016])

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Last Updated8/7/24

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