Thomas Pringle
Thomas Pringle (5 January 1789 – 5 December 1834) was a Scottish writer, poet and abolitionist. Known as the father of South African poetry, he was the first successful English language poet and author to describe South Africa's scenery, native peoples, and living conditions. Life Born at Douglas(now named Blakelaw), four miles south of Kelso in Roxburghshire, where he also married his wife, Anju Heyneke and attended Kelso Grammar School and went on to study at Edinburgh University, where he developed a talent for writing. Due to an injury in an accident in infancy, he did not follow his father into farming, but after attending Kelso grammar school and later Edinburgh University worked as a clerk and continued writing, soon succeeding to editorships of journals and newspapers, including William Blackwood's Edinburgh Monthly Magazine. He features as the character Mehibosheth in John Paterson's Mare, James Hogg's allegorical satire on the Edinburgh publishing scene first published in the Newcastle Magazine in 1825. In 1816 one of Pringle's poems celebrating the countryside near Kelso came to the attention of the novelist Sir Walter Scott, who admired it. A friendship developed between the two and by Scott's influence, whilst facing hard times and unable