Name Hugh Murray Role Geographer | Died 1846, Castle Baynard | |
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Books Morality of fiction, The United States of America, An Historical And Desc, Historical Account of Discoveri, Historical Account of Discoveri Similar People Robert Jameson, William Hooker, William John Swainson | ||
Hugh Murray (1779–1846) was a Scottish geographer.
Contents
Life
He was the younger son of Matthew Murray (1735–1791), minister of North Berwick, and grandson of George Murray (d. 1757), who had held the same post. His elder brother, George (1772–1822), was also minister of North Berwick from 1795 till his death. His mother was daughter of John Hill, minister of St. Andrews, and sister of Henry David Hill, professor at St. Andrews.
Murray entered the Edinburgh excise office as a clerk. On 22 January 1816 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He was for a time editor of the Scots Magazine, and was a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society of London. His connection with Archibald Constable's Edinburgh Gazetteer caused him to figure in the Tory squib, written by James Hogg and others, called Translation from an Ancient Chaldee MS., which appeared in Blackwood's Magazine for October 1817.
Murray died after a short illness, while on a visit to London, in Wardrobe Place, Doctors' Commons, on 4 March 1846.
Works
Murray published The Swiss Emigrants, a tale (anon.), in 1804; two philosophical treatises (The Morality of Fiction, 1805, and Enquiries respecting the Character of Nations, 1808); and another romance, Corasmin, or the Minister, in 1814.
Encyclopædia of Geography
Murray's major work was the Encyclopædia of Geography, a Description of the Earth, physical, statistical, civil, and political (London, 1834). He wrote the geographical part; the other sections were astronomy (William Wallace), botany (William Jackson Hooker), geology (Robert Jameson) and zoology (William Swainson). A supplement was published in 1843. The work contained 82 maps and over a thousand woodcuts. It was well received, and an American edition (1843) in three volumes was edited by Thomas Gamaliel Bradford.
Books
Murray's other main publications included:
After his death were published:
Other works
To the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Murray contributed, among other papers, one, in 1818, On the Ancient Geography of Central and Eastern Asia, with Illustrations derived from Recent Discoveries in the North of India. In 1817 he enlarged and completed John Leyden's Historical Account of Discoveries and Travels in Africa.’ Similar works by him on Asia (3 vols. Edinburgh, 1820) and North America (London, 1829) followed.
Murray also contributed to the press, and in the Edinburgh Cabinet Library there appeared compilations by him on the history or geography of: the Polar Seas (1830), British India (1832), China (1836), British America (1839), Africa (1830), and The United States (1844). Some of these volumes had contributions on natural history, by Robert Jameson, Thomas Stewart Traill, James Nicol, and others.