JOHNSTON, Richard Malcolm, author, born in Hancock county, Georgia, 8 March, 1822. He was graduated at Mercer university, Georgia, in 1841, and, after teaching a year, was admitted to the bar of the northern circuit of the state, declining a judgeship in 1857 to accept the chair of literature in the University of Georgia, where he remained till the beginning of the civil war. Retiring to his country home near Sparta, Georgia, he then opened a boarding school for boys, which in 1867 he removed to Baltimore county, Md., where he still (1887) resides. His first stories, a series of character sketches of the rural districts of Georgia, written after the war, were published under the title of "Dukesborough Tales" in the old "Southern Magazine," and afterward collected in book-form (New York, 1883). His other writings, besides constant contributions to magazines, are "A History of English Literature," in conjunction with William Hand Brown (Baltimore, 1879); "Biography of Alexander H. Stephens" (Philadelphia, 1883): "Old Mark Langston" (1884); and "Two Gray Tourists" (1885); and a collection of his stories (1887).