Brinsley Nicholson

Brinsley NicholsonM.D. (1824–14 September 1892) was a Scottish physician, known as an editor ofElizabethan literature.

Life

Born atFort George, Scotland,he was the eldest son of B. W. Hewittson Nicholson of the army medical staff. After a boyhood passed at Gibraltar, Malta, and the Cape, where his father was stationed, he studied medicine at theUniversity of Edinburghin 1841. After graduation he completed his medical studies in Paris.

Becoming an army surgeon, Nicholson spent some years in South Africa, and saw service in theXhosa Warsin 1853 and 1854. He was in China during theSecond Opium War,and present at the looting of theSummer PalaceinBeijing;and in New Zealand took part in theSecond Taranaki War.

About 1870 Nicholson retired from the army, and settled near London. He died 14 September 1892. He had married in 1875, and his wife survived him.

Works

Nicholson contributed genealogical tables ofXhosachiefs to aCompendium of Kafir Laws and Customsprinted by the government of British Kaffraria at Mount Coke in 1858.

In 1875 Nicholson edited, for the then recently formedNew Shakspere Society,theFirst Folioand the first quarto ofHenry the Fifth,and began the preparation of the "Parallel Texts" of the same play, issued in 1877 (not completed because serious illness). He later read papers at meetings of the New Shakspere Society.

Encouraged byWilliam Tennant Gairdner,Nicholson brought out in 1886 a reprint ofReginald Scot'sDiscoverie of Witchcraft(1584). His edition ofThe Best Plays of Ben Jonson,which was published posthumously in 1893, with an introduction byC. H. Herford,in the Mermaid Series (3 vols.) His edition ofJohn Donne's poems was completed for the Muses' Library in 1895.

Nicholson contributed toNotes and Queries,The Athenæum,The Antiquary,andShakespeariana.

Notes

Attribution

This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain:Lee, Sidney,ed. (1895). "Nicholson, Brinsley".Dictionary of National Biography.Vol. 41. London: Smith, Elder & Co.