1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Dunlop, John Colin

DUNLOP, JOHN COLIN (1785–1842), Scottish man of letters, was born on the 30th of December 1785. In 1816 he became sheriff of Renfrewshire, and retained this office until his death at Edinburgh, on the 26th of January (according to others, in February) 1842. The work by which he is best known, and which will always hold an honourable place in English literature, is his History of Fiction (1814; new edition, 1888, with notes by H. Wilson, in Bohn’s “Standard Library”). In spite of the somewhat contemptuous notices in Blackwood’s Magazine (September 1824) and the Quarterly Review (July 1815), it may be pronounced the best book on the subject in English. F. Liebrecht, by whom it was translated into German (1851) with valuable notes, describes it as the only work of its kind. Dunlop was also the author of A History of Roman Literature (1823–1828), and of Memoirs of Spain during the Reigns of Philip IV. and Charles II. (1834).