Background
He was born in Paisley in Scotland the son of Rev J. M. Dixon.
editor lexicographer linguist philosopher
He was born in Paisley in Scotland the son of Rev J. M. Dixon.
He graduated Master of Arts from Saint Andrews University in 1879 and was appointed scholar and tutor of philosophy there in the same year.
He was professor of English and secretary of the Imperial College of Engineering, Tokio, Japan, from 1879 to 1886, when he was called to the Imperial University of Japan in the same capacity. There he taught Hidesaburo Saito, one of the first Japanese writers of English Grammar, and Natsume Sōseki, a famous novelist and ex-university professor, who disliked his style of teaching English literature. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1885.
From 1892 to 1901 he was professor of English literature at Washington University in Saint Louis, Missouri
In 1903–1904 he was president of Columbia College, in Milton, Oregon. He was professor of English literature at the University of Southern California from 1905 to 1911, when he was transferred to the chair of Oriental studies and comparative literature.
In 1906 he became editor of the West Coast Magazine. In 1908, he received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Dickinson College.
He died on 27 September 1933.