Publisher. Born in Glasgow, into a publishing dynasty, he was the youngest son of another Walter Blackie (1816 - 1906) and nephew of John Blackie (1805-73). Blackie was educated at the Glasgow Academy and in Germany, before reading science at the University of Glasgow. He joined the family publishing business in 1879, but soon left for Canada, where he took on manual worked before working in the New York office of the publishers Appleton and finally returning to Blackie & Son in Glasgow, where he specialised in educational and children's books. He became chairman on the death of his elder brother, J. Alexander Blackie (1850 - 1918) and retired in 1937. He also served as a governor of the West of Scotland College of Agriculture. He was raised in Glasgow, by 1898 had moved with his family to Dunblane, but is most notable for commissioning Charles Rennie Mackintosh to build the Hill House in Helensburgh, which the Blackies occupied from 1904. It was at this home that Blackie eventually died, aged 92.
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