James Wood (encyclopaedist)

The Reverend James Wood (12 October 1820 – 17 March 1901) was a Scottish editor and Free Church minister. He was born in Leith and studied at the University of Edinburgh, living most of his life in Edinburgh. His admiration for Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin may have contributed to his failure to secure a ministry. Instead he earned a living as a writer. He translated Auguste Barth's Religions of India and edited Nuttall's Standard Dictionary, The Nuttall Encyclopaedia, Warne's Dictionary of Quotations (later titled Nuttall's Dictionary of Quotations), Bagster & Sons' Helps to the Bible, and a Carlyle School Reader. In 1881 he published anonymously The Strait Gate, and Other Discourses, with a Lecture on Thomas Carlyle, by a Scotch Preacher. He is described by P. J. E. Wilson as " that most conscientious of pedants".