James Hannay

James Hannay FRSE (17 February 1827 – 9 January 1873), was a Scottish novelist, journalist and diplomat.

Hannay was born at Dumfries, Scotland, on 17 February 1827. His father, David Hannay (1794-1864), a member of the Speculative Society at Edinburgh University, 1813–14, and author of Ned Allen, or the Past Age, 1849, was engaged in business in Dumfries. The family had some reason for believing that they were descended from the Hannays of Sorble. In James Hannay, the belief was sufficiently strong to influence his studies, inclining him to study heraldry and family history.

Hannay entered the navy on 2 March 1840, on board the HMS Cambridge, 78, and served in her during the tedious blockade of Alexandria in the Syrian war, and had therefore no share in the operations of Sir Charles Napier's squadron at Acre. From the Cambridge he passed in succession to the sloop HMS Snake in 1842, the corvette HMS Orestes in 1843, and the HMS Formidable, 84, in 1844. His tastes and his impatience both of routine work and control unfitted him for the life of a naval officer. Very soon after entering the service, he began to devote himself to general reading, and even studied Latin with a priest at Malta. With the instinct of a born journalist, he started a manuscript comic paper to ridicule the admiral and captains on the Mediterranean station. At a later period, he was wont to confess that he had been a somewhat insubordinate midshipman.

In 1845, Hannay and two brother-officers were tried by court-martial and dismissed the service. The finding of the court was generally thought to have been vindictive, and it was subsequently quashed on the ground of informality. Hannay was not, however, employed again, nor did he seriously seek for employment.

From 1846 onwards till his appointment as consul in 1868, Hannay worked on the press and at literature. His first engagement was as a reporter on the Morning Chronicle, in which capacity he relied more on his remarkable memory than on his knowledge of shorthand. In the meantime, he was reading zealously in the British Museum. At the end of 1847, he worked with Henry Sutherland Edwards on Pasquin, a very short-lived comic paper, and the forerunner of the somewhat happier Puppet Show, which lasted from 1848 to 1849.

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