Alexander Falconer Murison

A. F. Murison, MA, LLD, KC. (1847–1934)[1] was an eminent Professor of Roman Law and Jurisprudence at University College, London and at Oxford University. He was a prolific writer for newspapers and journals in a wide variety of subjects with comparatively few publications in his specialism of Roman Law.[1][2] He collated the text of Theophilus' Greek paraphrasis of Justinian's Institutes but failed to finish his extensive work in this field.[3] However, his translation of Theophilus was published in 2010 as the parallel English text accompanying the Greek in the new edition.[4] He also wrote two biographical works in Scottish history: Sir William Wallace (1898) and King Robert the Bruce (1899) in the Famous Scots Series published by Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier. Lack of money took him into journalism and he was editor of the Educational Times (now the Times Educational Supplement) from 1902 to 1912 and on the staff of the Daily Chronicle.[5] He even had time to enter politics and he stood as a Liberal Party candidate in at least three General Elections: for the Glasgow and Aberdeen Universities constituency in 1906 and for the Glasgow Central constituency in December 1910 and January 1910 and lost on all three occasions to a Conservative candidate.[6] He died on 8 June 1934 at his home in Clapham Common, London.[1][2]

Origins in Scotland

Murison was born at New Deer, Aberdeenshire, Scotland on 3 March 1847. He was born to a crofting family and looked after cattle as a boy. He won a bursary to Aberdeen Grammar School where he excelled and won a scholarship to Aberdeen University. After achieving a first class honours M.A. degree in classics, he returned to his old school and was an English Master there from 1869 to 1876. He married Elizabeth Logan in 1870 and they had two children, Alexander Logan (1871) and James William (1872). William (as he preferred to be called) became Chief Justice of the Straits Settlements.

Academic career in London and Oxford

Selected bibliography

Footnotes

  1. 1 2 3 Murison, Murison & Murison 1935
  2. 1 2 Murison Papers, UCL Special Collections Archive (100 volumes of manuscript papers, translations, working papers and notes of Alexander Falconer Murison)
  3. See the article 'Murison and Theophilus' in this University College, London website: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/history2/volterra/murison.htm
  4. Theophilus, Lokin & Murison 2010. (See also, http://chimaira.nl/Theophilus_antecessoris_paraphrasis_institutionum)
  5. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry for Murison, Alexander Falconer
  6. Murison's entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography states that he also stood in 1900 for the Glasgow Bridgeton constituency but this does not accord with the record of elections at Glasgow Bridgeton.
  7. This list of works is compiled partly from the above University College, London website and from some bookselling websites.

Sources

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 5/2/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.