Gosnell, Samuel
Samuel Gosnell Green (1822-1905) was born in Falmouth, Cornwall, the eldest of nine children of a Baptist minister. He was sent to a private school in London and, after school, worked in a printing office (John Haddon, Finsbury). From 1840-1843 he attended the Baptist College, Stepney, to prepare for the Baptist ministry and graduated from the University of London with a B.A.
After serving in two churches, he went to the Yorkshire Baptist College, Bradford, first as tutor in classics and mathematics and, from 1863, as principal, serving until 1876.
In 1876, Green came to London to serve as editor, and in 1881 as editorial secretary, of the Religious Tract Society. His main activities for the rest of his life were literary work, his most important being his ‘Handbook to the Grammar of the Greek Testament’ (1870). He remained as editorial secretary until 1891 and was the author of eighteen books.
For the Religious Tract Society's series of ‘Pen and Pencil Sketches’ he wrote and illustrated wholly or in part ‘Pictures from England’ (1879 and 1889), ‘France’ (1878), ‘Bible Lands’ (1879), ‘Germany’ (1880), ‘Scotland’ (1883; new editions 1886 and 1891), and ‘Italy’ (1885).
The ‘Scottish Pictures Drawn with Pen and Pencil’ from this series includes illustrations of Ailsa Craig, Arran (from Brodick Bay), Loch Ranza and Goat Fell from Brodick Bay. In this section of his travels, Green writes that Arran “should on no account be omitted by the lovers of bracing air and of noble scenery, especially if their pedestrian powers are good…….Not to have ascended Goat Fell is to have missed one of the noblest and most varied prospects which Great Britain affords.”
He died in London in 1905.
References:
The Dictionary of National Biography (1912)
Scottish Pictures Drawn with Pen and Pencil 1891 (new edition)
Author of ‘French Pictures’, ‘Pictures from the German Fatherland’ etc. A new edition, revised, with additional illustrations 1891
https://archive.org/details/scottishpictures00gree/page/70/mode/2up
https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/name/samuel-gosnell