William Black
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William Black (1841 – 1898) was a novelist born in Glasgow, Scotland, November 13, 1841.
He was educated with a view to being a landscape painter, a training that clearly influenced his literary life. At the age of twenty-three he went to London, after some experience in Glasgow journalism, and joined the staff of the "Morning Star," and, later, the "Daily News," of which journal he became assistant-editor.
His first novel, James Merle, appeared in 1868, but it made no impression. In the Austro-Prussian War he acted as a war correspondent. Thereafter he began afresh to write fiction, and was more successful; the publication of A Daughter of Heth (1871) at once established his popularity. The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton followed, and in 1873 A Princess of Thule attained great popularity. Retiring from journalism the next year he devoted himself entirely to fiction. A score of novels followed, the last in 1898, just before his death on December 10 of that year; among them may be mentioned In Silk Attire (1869), Macleod of Dare (1878), White Wings (1880), Shandon Bells (1882), Yolande (1883), Judith Shakespeare (1884), White Heather (1886), Stand Fast Craig-Royston! (1890), Green Pastures and Piccadilly, Three Feathers, Wild Eelin (1898).