ABSTRACT
William Black was born in November 1841, and brought up in Glasgow. When it became clear that Black was more proficient as a writer than as an artist, he found work on a local daily paper, and was eventually offered employment on the Glasgow Weekly Citizen, where the editor, Dr James Hedderwick, himself a poet and essayist, soon recognised his unusual talent. William Black fell deeply in love with a young German girl: they married in April 1865 and had some months of great happiness. William Black’s friend from the counting house had sent his father a copy of In Silk Attire; this was his response: Twickenham, March 6th, 1869. Black had written his first novel, James Merle, by the age of twenty-three, and it was published by Murray, a Glasgow publisher, in 1864. Meanwhile there had been an argument going on between Black and his publisher in Catherine Street.
