Hugh Murray (geographer)


Hugh Murray FRSE FRGS was a Scottish geographer and author. He is often referred to as Hew Murray.

Life

He was the younger son of Rev Matthew Murray FRSE, minister of North Berwick, and his wife, Anne Hill daughter of Ref John Hill, of St. Andrews, and sister of Henry David Hill, professor at St. Andrews, and of Rev George Hill.
Murray entered the Edinburgh excise office as a clerk.
On 22 January 1816 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Rev Thomas Brown, John Leslie and John Playfair. At this time he was living at 24 Stockbridge, Edinburgh.
He was for a time editor of the Scots Magazine, and was a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society of London. His connection with Archibald Constable's Edinburgh Gazetteer caused him to figure in the Tory squib, written by James Hogg and others, called Translation from an Ancient Chaldee MS., which appeared in Blackwood's Magazine for October 1817.
Murray died after a short illness, while on a visit to London, in Wardrobe Place, Doctors' Commons, on 4 March 1846.

Family

His grandfather Rev George Murray, was minister of North Berwick, as was his elder brother, George, from 1795 till his death.

Works

Murray published The Swiss Emigrants, a tale, in 1804; two philosophical treatises ; and another romance, Corasmin, or the Minister, in 1814.

''Encyclopædia of Geography''

Murray's major work was the Encyclopædia of Geography, a Description of the Earth, physical, statistical, civil, and political. He wrote the geographical part; the other sections were astronomy, botany, geology and zoology. A supplement was published in 1843. The work contained 82 maps and over a thousand woodcuts. It was well received, and an American edition in three volumes was edited by Thomas Gamaliel Bradford.

Books

Murray's other main publications included:
After his death were published:
To the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Murray contributed, among other papers, one, in 1818, On the Ancient Geography of Central and Eastern Asia, with Illustrations derived from Recent Discoveries in the North of India. In 1817 he enlarged and completed John Leyden's Historical Account of Discoveries and Travels in Africa.’ Similar works by him on Asia and North America followed.
Murray also contributed to the press, and in the Edinburgh Cabinet Library there appeared compilations by him on the history or geography of: the Polar Seas, British India, China, British America, Africa, and The United States. Some of these volumes had contributions on natural history, by Robert Jameson, Thomas Stewart Traill, James Nicol, and others.