W. Robertson Nicoll

Sir William Robertson Nicoll (10 October 1851 – 4 May 1923) was a Scottish Free Church minister, journalist, editor, and man of letters.

Biography

Nicoll was born in Lumsden, Aberdeenshire, the son of Rev. Harry Nicoll (1812–1891), a Free Church minister of Auchindoir, and his wife, Jane Robertson.

He was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School and graduated MA at the University of Aberdeen in 1870, and studied for the ministry at the Free Church Divinity Hall there until 1874, when he was ordained minister of the Free Church at Dufftown, Banffshire. Three years later he moved to Kelso where he met Jane T. Stoddart. He was to be a great influence on her life. In 1884 became he editor of The Expositor for Hodder and Stoughton, a position which he held until his death.

In 1885, Nicoll was forced to retire from pastoral ministry after an attack of typhoid had badly damaged his lung. In 1886, he moved south to London. With the support of Hodder and Stoughton he founded the British Weekly, a Nonconformist newspaper, which gained great influence over opinion in the "free churches" (i.e. those Christian denominations outside the established church). He had been working with Jane Stoddart on a project and in 1890 she left teaching to join him on a full time basis as his assistant.

Nicoll secured many writers of exceptional talent for his paper (including Marcus Dods, J. M. Barrie, Ian Maclaren, Alexander Whyte, Alexander Maclaren, Carnegie Simpson and James Denney), to which he added his own considerable talents as a contributor. He began a highly popular feature, "Correspondence of Claudius Clear", which enabled him to share his interests and his reading with his readers. He was also the founding editor of The Bookman from 1891, and acted as chief literary adviser to Hodder and Stoughton.