The Dictionary of Australasian Biography/Sutherland, Alexander

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1452056The Dictionary of Australasian Biography — Sutherland, AlexanderPhilip Mennell

Sutherland, Alexander, M.A., was born at Glasgow in 1852 and was educated in Scotland till 1864, when his father's failing health compelled the family to remove to Sydney. There at the age of fifteen he entered the service of the Education Department as a pupil teacher. At the age of nineteen he had by his own studies in the evening prepared for a university course, and in 1871 he joined the Melbourne University. Having obtained an honour degree he was mathematical master to the Scotch College during two years. At the close of 1877 he purchased the school known as Carlton College, of which he is still proprietor. Along with his younger brother George (q.v.) he published in 1879 a school history of Australia, which has enjoyed much popularity in the colonies, having attained a sale of about 80,000 copies. Subsequently he wrote by himself a "New Geography" which has been fairly successful as a schoolbook, and which  induced Dr. Geikie to ask the author to  contribute to Macmillan's new geographical series, of which he is the editor. But  Mr. Sutherland's most important work  has been done in other departments. In  1888 he contributed to a work called  "Victoria and its Metropolis," the most  elaborate history of Victoria which has yet been written. In 1889 he published a volume of verse under the title of "Thirty Short Poems." But the bulk of his literary work has been contributed to the Melbourne Review, the Australasian, the Argus, and a number of magazines (generally of short lives) which have striven to nourish on Australian soil. Mr. Sutherland has recently edited Kendall's poems, and has contributed articles on Melbourne and Victoria to the Encyclopædia Britannica. He was for eight years secretary to the Royal Society of Victoria, and has occupied a good deal of his time during the last twelve years in the delivery of popular lectures on scientific and literary subjects.