Robert Bisset was a Scottish writer, best known as the biographer of Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke PC was an Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher who, after moving to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of Great Britain as a member of the Whig party....

 and of Joseph Addison

Joseph Addison

Joseph Addison was an English essayist, poet, playwright and politician. He was a man of letters, eldest son of Lancelot Addison...

, Richard Steele

Richard Steele

Sir Richard Steele was an Irish writer and politician, remembered as co-founder, with his friend Joseph Addison, of the magazine The Spectator....

 and other contributors to The Spectator

The Spectator (1711)

The Spectator was a daily publication of 1711–12, founded by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele in England after they met at Charterhouse School. Eustace Budgell, a cousin of Addison's, also contributed to the publication. Each 'paper', or 'number', was approximately 2,500 words long, and the...

.

Life

Robert Bisset was the son of Rev. Dr. Bisset, minister of Logierait

Logierait

Logierait is a village and parish in Atholl, Scotland. It is situated at the confluence of the rivers Tay and Tummel, west of the A9 road in Perth and Kinross....

, Perthshire

Perthshire

Perthshire, officially the County of Perth , is a registration county in central Scotland. It extends from Strathmore in the east, to the Pass of Drumochter in the north, Rannoch Moor and Ben Lui in the west, and Aberfoyle in the south...

. Though he studied for the church in Edinburgh, Robert Bisset eventually became a Doctor of Laws and moved to England. He was editor of the short-lived The Historical Magazine; or Classical Library of Public Events from November 1788 to December 1792. Bisset's Biographical Sketch of the Authors of the Spectator, the first volume of an eight-volume edition of the Spectator, included sketches of Addison, Steele, Thomas Parnell

Thomas Parnell

Thomas Parnell was a poet and clergyman, born in Dublin and educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He was a friend of both Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift. He participated in the Scriblerus Club, contributing to The Spectator, and he also aided Pope in his translation of The Iliad...

, John Hughes

John Hughes (poet)

John Hughes was an English poet also noted for his editing of and commentary on the works of Edmund Spenser. Writing at the very end of 17th Century and at the beginning of the 18th, he also translated French drama and poetry, including Molière. Hughes was a favorite of the nobility and...

, Eustace Budgell

Eustace Budgell

Eustace Budgell was an English writer and politician.Born in St Thomas near Exeter, Budgell was educated at Oxford University. His cousin, the writer Joseph Addison, took him to Ireland and got him appointed to a lucrative office...

, Laurence Eusden

Laurence Eusden

Laurence Eusden was an English poet who became Poet Laureate in 1718.- Life :Laurence Eusden was born in Spofforth in the North Riding of Yorkshire in 1688 to the Rev. Laurence Eusden, rector of Spofforth, Yorkshire. Eusden was baptized on 6 September 1688...

, Thomas Tickell

Thomas Tickell

Thomas Tickell was a minor English poet and man of letters.-Life:The son of a clergyman, he was born at Bridekirk near Cockermouth, Cumberland. He was educated at St Bees School 1695-1701, and in 1701 entered the Queen's College, Oxford, taking his M.A. degree in 1709...

 and Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...

. His Life of Edmund Burke (1798) praised Burke highly, defending his political consistency against detractors. Bisset also wrote two novels, two proslavery tracts, "and a spate of polemical, antidemocratic writing".

Works

• A Biographical Sketch of the Authors of the Spectator. Volume I of Bisset, ed., Spectator, 8 vols, London, 1793-1794.
• The Life of Edmund Burke, London, 1798
• The history of the reign of George III to the termination of the late war, 6 vols, London, 1803
• Modern Literature, 3 vols, London, 1804.
• The history of the negro slave trade in its connection with the commerce and prosperity of the West Indies, and the wealth and power of the British empire, 2 vols, London, 1805

External links