A Victorian public servant and man of letters, George A. Aitken was an expert on the Queen Anne period of English literature, although he also did much scholarly work involving the literature of the Restoration. He was the author of The Life of Richard Steele (1889), The Life and Works of John Arbuthnot (1892), and forty-six entries in the Dictionary of National Biography (DNB), which were written between 1892 and 1901, and the editor of works of numerous authors, among them Andrew Marvell, Robert Burns, Thomas Parnell, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Daniel Defoe, and Jonathan Swift.

George Atherton Aitken was born in Barkingside, Essex, on 19 March 1860 and was the only son of John Aitken and Mary Ann Elizabeth Salmon. He attended King's College School and University College, London, from 1879 to 1880 and 1882 to 1883, respectively. He won numerous awards while a student there, including the junior- and senior-class prizes. In 1888 he entered the secretary's office...