James Stout Angus
Shetland writer (1830-1923)
James Stout Angus (20 September 1830 – 26 December 1923) was a writer from Shetland, Scotland.
Life
Angus was born at Catfirth Haa in the parish of Nesting. His grandfather William Angus is recorded first at Burraness in Delting, but the lands of Catfirth were leased in 1782 to the Angus family who retained them until 1890. His son Hercules (1791–1871) married Janet Stout of Scatsta. He was a merchant at Catfirth and it was here that the writer grew up. James had some tuition from Robert Laing, schoolmaster, land surveyor and teacher of navigation, and he assisted his schoolmaster uncle in Reawick for a time, but he subsequently bound himself as a housewright or joiner, then worked as a ship's carpenter, sailing emigrant and East Indian ships. He settled in Lerwick when he married, establishing a successful business as a housewright at No. 6 Commercial Street.
Angus began to publish poetry in the press in the 1870s, and is credited by Laurence Graham as having composed, in ‘Eels’ (1877), the "first truly original poem written in what we know as the Shetland dialect". In 1910, aged 80, having been inspired by the work of the Faeroese philologist Jakob Jakobsen, he published his Etymological Glossary of Some Shetland Placenames, and four years later his Glossary of the Shetland Dialect.
“James Stout Angus” enters the record as shetland writer (1830-1923). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what James, Stout and Angus can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q6143731. VIAF identifies the subject as 305130174. The Library of Congress control number is no2013083291. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1830, 1923, 1782 and 1890.
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This entry incorporates text from “James Stout Angus” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.