Robert Mudie

Robert Mudie (28 June 1777– 29 April 1842) was a British newspaper editor, journalist, and author. He wrote books on a wide range of subjects including mathematics and astronomy, English history, geography and life. He was also a keen naturalist and wrote several books on natural history including on British birdlife. As a journalist, his reporting has been suggested as a possible inspiration for Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist.

Life

Mudie was born in Angus, Scotland, was the youngest son of John Mudie, a weaver, and his wife Elizabeth (née Bany). He spent some time as a shepherd in the Sidlaw Hills. After attending the village school he worked as a weaver until he was drafted into the militia. Largely self-educated, from his boyhood he was an avid reader, studied mainly from the Encyclopædia Britannica. He taught himself Latin by beginning in the middle of Virgil, reading to the end, using a dictionary.

At the end of his four years of militia service he spent some time as weaver in Bucklemaker Wynd in Dundee. He became master of a village school in the south of Fife. In 1802, he was appointed teacher of Gaelic and drawing at Inverness Royal Academy, although he knew little Gaelic. About 1808, he became drawing-master to Dundee Academy, but soon also took on the department of arithmetic and English composition. His first writing was the poem ‘The Maid of Griban’ (1810) and his first novel Glenfergus came out a decade later in 1820. He contributed much to the local newspaper, and ran for some time a monthly periodical. Becoming a member of the Dundee town council, he worked energetically for burgh reform with R.S. Rintoul, editor of the radical Dundee Advertiser and later of The Spectator. In politics he was ‘an ardent reformer’. He had about this time some acquaintance with Thomas Chalmers, then in St Andrews. Mudie's speeches, attacking corruption on the council, led to the loss of his post as teacher of arithmetic (his drawing post was beyond the council's control). He tried, unsuccessfully, to start a mercantile and mathematical academy and launched two short-lived periodicals, The Independent (April–September 1816) and The Caledonian (June–October 1821).