Synopsis
Hogg was a superb letter-writer, and this is the initial volume of the first collected edition of his letters (to be completed in three volumes). Many of the letters have never been published before, or published only in part. They vividly reflect Hogg’s varied social experience and shed new light on his own writings and those of his contemporaries. Among his famous correspondents were writers such as Scott, Byron, and Southey, antiquarians such as Robert Surtees, politicians such as Sir Robert Peel, and editors and publishers such as John Murray, William Blackwood, and Robert Chambers. But there are also letters to shepherds, farmers, aristocrats, musicians, young ladies, and bluestockings. Hogg first appears in this volume in 1800 as a young shepherd with literary ambitions, and becomes the famous author of The Queen’s Wake (1813) and a key supporter of the early Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (1817). Among the final letters it contains are some tender if idiosyncratic love-letters to the Dumfriesshire girl he married in 1820 at the mature age of forty-nine. Hogg’s entertaining and informative letters are supplemented by detailed annotation and a full editorial apparatus, including biographical notes on his chief correspondents and a concise overview of this phase of his life.This edition of Hogg’s Letters has its roots in the late 1970s and 1980s, when the four founder members of the James Hogg Society (Gillian Hughes, Douglas Mack, Robin MacLachlan, and Elaine Petrie) began work on tracing and transcribing Hogg’s surviving letters. The major tasks of completing this work and preparing a full-scale edition of Hogg’s Letters were subsequently passed to Gillian Hughes, who is now bringing this important research project to fruition.Key Features:* The first ever edition of Hogg’s letters to be published* Includes many letters never previously published* Features Hogg’s correspondence with figures such as Sir Walter Scott, Lord Byron and
About the Authors
James Hogg was a Scottish poet, novelist and essayist who wrote in both Scots and English. He is best known for his novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner.
The late Douglas S. Mack was formerly Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Stirling.
Gillian Hughes, Independent Scholar, has been a General Editor of the Stirling/South Carolina Research Edition of the Collected Works of James Hogg, and is currently an advisory editor for the Edinburgh Edition of Walter Scott’s Poetry and for the New Edinburgh Edition of the Works of Robert Louis Stevenson. She has published critical editions of works by each of these writers, and also a biography of James Hogg.
Robin MacLachlan is Hogg Society Treasurer and an independent scholar.
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