Richard Malcolm Johnston was an American educator and author. Johnson was born in Powelton, Hancock County, Georgia. His father was a Baptist minister, and his early education was received at a country school and finished at Mercer University. After graduating there he spent a year teaching and then took up the study of law and was admitted to the Bar in 1843. In 1857, he accepted an appointment to the chair of belles-lettres and oratory at the University of Georgia in Athens, retaining it until the opening of the Civil War, when he began a school for boys on his farm near Sparta. This he... kept going during the war, serving also for a time on the staff of General J.E. Brown, and helping to organize the state militia. At the close of the war he moved to Maryland, where he opened the Penn Lucy School for boys near Baltimore. One of his teaching staff here was the poet Sidney Lanier, who persuaded him to begin to write for publication, although he was then over fifty years old. His first stories were sent to the Southern Magazine; others to The Century followed, and became immediately popular.
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