Henry Glassford Bell (5 November 1803 – 7 January 1874) was a Scottish lawyer, poet and historian.

Born in Glasgow, the son of advocate James Bell, he received his education at the Glasgow High School and at Edinburgh University.

As a poet, he became intimate with Delta Moir, James Hogg, John Wilson (Christopher North), and others on the staff of Blackwood's Magazine, to which he was drawn by his political sympathies. In 1828 he became editor of the Edinburgh Literary Journal, which was eventually incorporated in the Edinburgh Weekly Chronicle.^[1]

In 1831 he published Summer and Winter Hours, a volume of poems, of which the best known is that on Mary, Queen of Scots. He further defended the cause of the queen in a prose Life (2 vols, 1828–1831). Among his other works may be mentioned a preface which he wrote to Bell and Bains's edition (1865) of the works of Shakespeare, and Romances and Minor Poems (1866). He figures in the society of the Noctes Ambrosianae as "Tallboys."^[2]

He was a qualified advocate and was admitted to the bar in 1832. In 1839 he was appointed sheriff-substitute of Lanarkshire, and in 1867 succeeded Sir Archibald Alison to the post of sheriff of the county,^[3] an office which he filled with distinguished success until his death in 1874.^[4][5]