Biography:William C. Honeyman

WILLIAM CRAWFORD HONEYMAN (1845-1919). William C. Honeyman was born in Wellington, New Zealand, to Scottish parents in 1845 (he was descended from George Honeyman, farmer and linen weaver of near Largo, Fife), but returned to Britain in 1849 with his mother and three siblings. His mother was the second daughter of Adam Crawford of Edinburgh, an writer who also wrote songs such as "O, wha hasna' heard o' the Toon o' Dunkel?," "All Hallow Fair, O," and others. Honeyman became an accomplished violinist and orchestra leader, and published a number of tutorials on the instrument, including the Strathspey, Reel and Hornpipe Tutor in 1898, and The Violin, How to Master It (1879), the latter of which went through at least eighteen editions. His daughter Liza was also an accomplished solo violinist and played on a highly regarded Guarnerius instrument made in Cremona in 1742. He was also fiction editor of the People's Journal and was famous in his time as the author of a number of popular police detective novels under the pseudonym James McGovan, which are thought to have influenced Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. Honeyman lived at Cremona Villa, Newport, Fife.