David Blair (encyclopedist)
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David Blair (4 June 1820 – February 19, 1899) was an Irish Australian politician, journalist and encyclopedist.
Blair was born in County Monaghan, Ireland to parents of Scottish descent. He studied at the Hibernian Military School, Dublin, and was gifted in composition. He left in 1835, worked in an uncle's business but did not enjoy it. In 1840 he joined the Ordnance Survey of Ireland as a calculator stationed in Limerick and then Cork. In 1841 he transferred to Southampton where for almost nine years he worked on the triangulation of England and the survey of London. Intelligent, zealous and ambitious, he remained unsatisfied in his work, even speculating in 1848 on a military career, and found expression in supporting the Chartists as a lecturer in Southampton, in reading and in church activities.
Blair then studied for the ministry in Ireland and came to Australia in 1850 at the suggestion of John Dunmore Lang, the intention being that he should go into the back country as a missionary. Blair, however, took up journalism in Sydney, where he was associated with Henry Parkes on the Empire newspaper. Blair went to Victoria in 1852 and had a long and varied career as a journalist.
He was elected a member of the legislative assembly of Victoria in 1856 and again in 1868, but did not make any special mark in politics. In 1876 he edited the Speeches of Henry Parkes, and in 1879 he published The History of Australasia--to the Establishment of Self-Government, based largely on the works of his predecessors. In 1881 appeared his Cyclopaedia of Australasia, a useful compilation. Blair, who was a man of scholarly taste with a fine memory, died at Melbourne.
[edit] References
- Serle, Percival (1949). “Blair, David”, Dictionary of Australian Biography. Sydney: Angus and Robertson.
- J. I. Roe, 'Blair, David (1820 - 1899)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 3, MUP, 1969, pp 179-180.
