Edinburgh publisher of the firm Sutherland & Knox. Contributed to Tait's; was for three years Scottish editor of Daily News; founded and edited the Torch (Edinburgh), 1846 (January-May).

The H.W. contributor cannot be proved to be the Edinburgh publisher, but available evidence seems sufficient for the identification. Of the six items listed below, only one ("The Tyrant of Minnigissengen", adapted from a novelette by AIphonse Karr) furnishes nothing that can be interpreted as connecting the contributor with the Edinburgh publisher. In "What I Call Sensible Legislation", the writer states that he is "a Scotchman"; various comments in "Seals and Whales" and in "Fishing for Herrings" imply his residence in Scotland; in "Who Murdered Downie?" he relates a disastrous prank played by Marischal College students toward the close of the eighteenth century. Pointing more specifically to the identification is the fact that "Colour-Blindness" is based on an article ("On the Prevalence of Chromato-Pseudopsis" by the Edinburgh professor George Wilson) that appeared in the Monthly Journal of Medical Science—a publication of Sutherland & Knox. (The periodical source of "Colour-Blindness" is not stated in that article; the source is vaguely acknowledged in a later article by Morley, "Colours and Eyes", December 29 1855, which is based on the book—also a Sutherland & Knox publication in which Wilson reprinted "On the Prevalence of Chromato-Pseudopsis").

Payment for five of Knox's contributions recorded as made by post-office order.

Harper's reprinted "Seals and Whales" and "Who Murdered Downie?", without acknowledgment to H.W. Wills, in Old Leaves: Gathered from Household Words, included "The Tyrant of Minnigissengen" as his writing, without acknowledgment of the joint authorship that he had recorded in the Office Book.

Author: Anne Lohrli; © University of Toronto Press, 1971.