HILL, GEORGE BIRKBECK NORMAN English author, editor of Boswell and commentator on Samuel Johnson, was born at Tottenham, Middlesex, the son of Arthur Hill, head master of Bruce Castle school. He was educated in his father's school and at Pembroke college, Oxford. In 1858 he be gan to teach at Bruce Castle school, and from 1868 to 1877 was head master. In 1869 he became a regular contributor to the Sat urday Review. He settled at Oxford in 1887, but from 1891 on wards his winters were usually spent abroad. He died at Hamp stead, London, on Feb. 2 7, 1903. His works include: Dr. Johnson, his Friends and his Critics (1878) ; an edition of Boswell's Corre spondence (1879) ; a laborious edition of Boswell's Life of John son, including Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, and Johnson's Diary of a Journey into North Wales (6 vols., 1887) ; Wit and Wisdom of Samuel Johnson (1888) ; Select Essays of Dr. Johnson (1889); Footsteps of Dr. Johnson in Scotland (189o) ; Letters of Johnson (1892) ; Johnsonian Miscellanies ( 2 vols., 1897) ; an edition (19oo) of Edward Gibbon's Autobio graphy; Johnson's Lives of the Poets (3 vols., 1905), and other works on the i8th-century topics. Dr. Birkbeck Hill's elaborate edition of Boswell's Life is a monumental work, invaluable to the student.
See a memoir by his nephew, Harold Spencer Scott, in the edition of the Lives of the English Poets (19°5), and the Letters edited by his daughter, Lucy Crump, in 1903.