WILSON, JOHN (1785-1854), Scottish writer, the CHRIS TOPHER NORTH of Blackwood's Magazine, was born at Paisley on May 18, 1785, the son of a wealthy gauze manufacturer who died when John was eleven years old. In 1803 Wilson was entered as a gentleman commoner at Magdalen College, Oxford. He took his degree in 1807, and found himself at twenty-two his own mas ter, with a good income, no father or guardian to control him, and an estate on Windermere called Elleray. In 1812 he pub lished a considerable volume of poems the Isle of Palms. In 1815 he lost his fortune. He now read law and was called to the Scottish bar. In 1817 Wilson began his connection with Black wood's Magazine. He became the principal writer for the review, though he was never its nominal editor. In 1822 began the series of Noctes Ambrosianae, after 1825 mostly Wilson's work.
Wilson now established himself (1819) in Ann Street, Edin burgh, with his wife and family of five children, and in 182o he was elected to the chair of moral philosophy in the university of Edinburgh. His duties left him plenty of time for magazine work, and for many years his contributions to Blackwood were extraor dinarily voluminous, in one year (1834) amounting to over fifty separate articles. In 1851 he resigned his professorship, and a Civil List pension of £300 a year was conferred on him. He died at Edinburgh on April 3, See Christopher North, by Mrs. Mary Gordon, his daughter (1862) ; and Mrs. Oliphant, Annals of a Publishing House; William Black wood and his Sons (1897).