Educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge, he was a friend of Joanna Baillie and the author of The Living and the Dead (1827, 1829). He was curate of Edington in Wiltshire (1824) and Ashby de la Zouch in Leicestershire (1834). His identity is thoroughly confused with another Erskine Neale (1804-1883), also of Cambridge, also a novelist. The Literary Gazette (7 February 1829) believes him a “a curate of Liverpool and a relative of the late Mr. Archibald Constable.“