William Allan Neilson

For other people named William Neilson, see William Neilson (disambiguation).

William Allan Neilson
Academic work
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William Allan Neilson (28 March 1869 – 1946) was a Scottish-American educator, writer and lexicographer, graduated in the University of Edinburgh in 1891 and became a Ph.D. in Harvard University in 1898. He was president of Smith College between 1917 and 1939.

Neilson was born in Doune, Scotland and he emigrated to the United States in 1895, being naturalised 3 August 1905. He taught at Bryn Mawr College from 1898 to 1900, Harvard from 1900 to 1904, Columbia from 1904 to 1906, and Harvard again from 1906 to 1917. Neilson was author of a number of critical works on William Shakespeare, Robert Burns and the Elizabethan theatre, editor of the Cambridge and Tudor editions of Shakespeare (1906, 1911) and editor of Webster's New International Dictionary, Second Edition (1934). Less known is his translation of the famous late 14th century Middle English alliterative chivalric romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Works

• The Facts About Shakespeare
• Robert Burns
• Sir Gawain And The Green Knight (transl. by William Allan Neilson)

Further reading

• Margaret Farrand Thorp, Neilson of Smith (1956)

External links

• Works written by or about William Allan Neilson at Wikisource
• Works by William Allan Neilson at Project Gutenberg
• Works by William Allan Neilson at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Allison Lockwood, "Making of a president: Smith College's William Allan Neilson," Daily Hampshire Gazette, 8 May 2010.