| Honorific Prefix: | Sir |
| William Robertson Nicoll | |
| Occupation: | Minister, journalist, editor, man of letters |
| Birth Date: | 10 October 1851 |
| Birth Place: | Lumsden, Aberdeenshire |
| Death Place: | Frognal, Hampstead, London |
| Death Date: | 4 May 1923 (aged 71) |
| Resting Place: | Highgate Cemetery |
| Spouse: | Isabella Dunlop, Catherine Pollard |
| Children: | 3 |
| Signature: | William Robertson Nicoll Signature.jpg |
Sir William Robertson Nicoll (10 October 18514 May 1923) was a Scottish Free Church minister, journalist, editor, and man of letters.
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.[1]
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.[2] 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.[2]
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.
Among his other enterprises were The Expositor's Bible (originally published by Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1896, but afterward reprinted in New York by A. C. Armstrong & Son) and The Theological Educator. He edited The Expositor's Greek Testament (from 1897). He also edited a series of Contemporary Writers (from 1894), and of Literary Lives (from 1904).He projected, but never wrote, a history of The Victorian Era in English Literature, and edited, with T. J. Wise, two volumes of Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century. He was knighted by King Edward VII in 1909, ostensibly for his literary work, but in reality probably more for his long-term support for the Liberal Party. He was appointed to the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in the 1921 Birthday Honours.Nicoll was the father of Maurice Nicoll, a leading British psychologist and author who studied under Carl Jung and became a leading expositor of the teachings of the Greco-Armenian spiritual master G.I. Gurdjieff.
He died on 4 May 1923 at his home, Bay Tree House, in Frognal, Hampstead, London and is buried in a family grave on the west side of Highgate Cemetery.
He married twice: firstly in 1878 to Isabella Dunlop (1857–1894); secondly in 1897 to Catherine Pollard (1863–1960).
Children from the first marriage were Isa Constance Nicoll (1881–1963) an author and poet, and Henry Maurice Dunlop Nicoll (1884–1953) a noted psychiatrist.
The one child of the second marriage was Mildred Robertson Nicoll (1898–1995).
A list of his publications up to 1902 was included in a monograph on Nicoll by Jane T. Stoddart (New Century Leaders, 1903).The official biography was written by Nicoll's friend T. H. Darlow and published in 1925 as a more complete list. A new biographical appreciation was published in 2011: "Voice of Nonconformity: William Robertson Nicoll and the British Weekly", written by Keith A. Ives.