William Rathbone Greg, a prolific essayist on literary, social, political, and religious subjects, was born in 1809 in Manchester. There is no published record of the exact date of his birth. His father, Samuel Greg, was an astute businessman of Scots-Irish descent who had made a fortune from the cotton mill he had built at Wilmslow, in Cheshire, and his mother, Hannah Lightbody Greg, was a cultivated, energetic woman who had compiled a book of maxims and written a manual on nursing. Much of the son's character was shaped by his parents, Unitarians who nurtured in their thirteen children, of whom Greg was the youngest, the love of a simple life devoted to intellectual pursuits and humanitarian service.

After being taught at home by an elder sister and then at schools in Leeds and Bristol, Greg in 1826 entered the University of Edinburgh, where he remained through the 1828 session. He...