James Roxburgh McClymont was born in Denholm, Scotland and awarded an MA from Edinburgh University in 1876. According to John Arnold and John Hay (eds.) in The Bibliography of Australian Literature : K-O : to 2000 (2007) McClymont published Songs and Popular Chants, with Other Verses (London,1878) before his arrival in Australia.
McClymont is thought to have arrived in Melbourne on the 1881 on the Loch Tay from Glasgow in 1881. For at least two decades, from the 1880s onward, he lived in Tasmania. He may also have visited New Zealand and Sydney, New South Wales, and Adelaide, South Australia.
While living in Tasmania, McClymont may have written some of the poems that appear in his selected works of poetry Characters in Outline and Other Poems (1911), Metrical Romances and Ballads, and Other Poems (1912), and The Land of False Delight and Other Poems (1913) all published in England. One of the poems in Characters in Outline, 'A Returning Colonist', reads as a farewell to life in Tasmania. His book, Metrical Romances, published about 1933, comprises poetry from previous works.
McClymont wrote a number of papers for the Royal Society of Tasmania and the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science. John Alexander Ferguson in the Bibliography of Australia : Volume IV : 1851-1900 : H-P (1965) notes that McClymont read a paper to the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science on January 8 1892 which was published in Hobart in 1892 as The Theory of an Antipodal Southern Continent during the Sixteenth Century. Other evidence of his life in Australia includes a photograph of a Mr McClymont from the series 'Photographs of Season Ticket Holders to the Tasmanian International Exhibition 1894 - 1895' held by the Archives Office of Tasmania. The Mercury newspaper, 29 August 1893, notes that he was 'granted an MA, ad eundem from the University of Tasmania'.The British Library lists Notes and Articles Contributed to the Zoologist and the Emu : (Reprints Selected by the Author) : Addenda published in Hobart [1902-1908]. The Adelaide Register, 9 January 1907 p. 2 and 11 January 1907 p. 6, reports on a paper and lists another both given by McClymont to an Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science Congress at the University of Adelaide, South Australia, in January 1907.
At some time, possibly after 1907 and before World War I, McClymont appears to have returned to Great Britain. He may also have lived or travelled extensively in France, Spain and Italy. The Mitchell Library in Glasgow, Scotland, holds A List of Butterflies Collected by James R. McClymont in Spain and Italy in the Years 1916 – 1924 donated by the author about 1925. A Scot in Spain, published in Glasgow in 1921, and a typescript, Aftermath, and Other Poems [1925], are held by the British Library.
McClymont also wrote several other books, including Pedraluarez Cabral (Pedro Alluarez de Gouvea) : His Progenitors, His Life and His Voyage to America and India (1914), Vicente Anes Pincon (1916), Essays on Ornithology (1920), and Essays in Historical Geography (1921).
A poet, historian, geographer, cartographer and naturalist McClymont died, at the Villa Costabelle, Menton Garavan, in France at the age of 81. His death certificate lists him as having 'no profession'.
