John Callander

John Callander (1722–1789) of Craigforth in Stirlingshire was a Scottish antiquary and plagiarist.

Life He was the son of James Callander, and Katherine Mackenzie, daughter of Sir Kenneth Mackenzie of Cromarty. He passed advocate at the Scottish bar, but never obtained a practice.

The preface by James Maidment to Letters from Thomas Percy, D.D., afterwards Bishop of Dromore, John Callander of Craigforth, Esq., and others, to George Paton, which appeared at Edinburgh in 1830, indicates that in his latter years Callendar was reclusive, and a religious melancholic. He died, at an old age, at Craigforth on 14 September 1789. was an influential work for British readers, and timely given the expeditions of James Cook, the content involved adaptation without acknowledgement of the work and maps of de Brosses, and is considered as plagiarism.

In 1779 Callander published An Essay towards a Literal English Version of the New Testament in the Epistle of Paul directed to the Ephesians, in which he gave a metaphrase in English of the Greek idiom. His edition of Two ancient Scottish Poems, the Gaberlunzie Man, and Christ's Kirk on the Green, with Notes and Observations, published at Edinburgh in 1782, contained questionable etymological remarks.

Callander projected other works, including Bibliotheca Septentrionalis, of which he printed a specimen in 1778, and a History of the Ancient Music of Scotland from the age of the venerable Ossian to the beginning of the Sixteenth Century, for which he printed Proposals in 1781.

Family By his wife, Mary, daughter of Sir James Livingston, he had seventeen children. His eldest son changed his surname, and was known as James Campbell.