The Prose of Allan Ramsay

Transforming academic and popular understanding of this pivotal but, until now, largely under-researched literary figure, this volume offers the first full and consistent edition of Allan Ramsay’s prose. The volume contains all extant prose writings, from both manuscript and print sources. As well as all known letters, the volume includes prefaces, dedications and advertisements for Ramsay’s major collections. It also contains Ramsay’s anonymously-published Some Few Hints in Defence of Dramatical Entertainments, the full text of his influential collection of Scots Proverbs and significant prose from manuscript sources, including Ramsay’s account of Edinburgh’s Porteous Riots in April 1736 and notes on contemporary plays. In these works, we see Ramsay’s consistent and steadfast commitment to preserving Scottish literary culture, and gain a privileged insight into Ramsay’s personality, his priorities, ambitions and core beliefs.

Rhona Brown is Professor of Scottish Textual Cultures at the University of Glasgow. Her research is focused on Scottish literature of the eighteenth century, particularly poetry in Scots, literary and cultural networks of the period and the early Scottish periodical press. She has published widely on eighteenth-century Scottish poetry and has had a particular focus the work of Robert Fergusson; her first monograph was Robert Fergusson and the Scottish Periodical Press (2012). She is an expert on the eighteenth-century periodical press, and was co-editor, with Alex Benchimol and David Shuttleton, of Before Blackwood’s: Scottish Journalism in the Age of Enlightenment (2015). Rhona is also an experienced textual editor, having edited Allan Ramsay’s Poems (2 Volumes, 2023) and co-edited, with Dr Craig Lamont, Ramsay’s Prose (2024).

Craig Lamont is Lecturer in Scottish Studies at the University of Glasgow, working across Scottish Literature and Scottish History. He has worked on the Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Works of Allan Ramsay and the Oxford Edition of the Works of Robert Burns, and has published new editions of Dorothy K. Haynes. He co-edited 1820: Scottish Rebellion, Essays on a Nineteenth-Century Insurrection (2022). His monograph The Cultural Memory of Georgian Glasgow was published by Edinburgh University Press in 2021. His chief research interests are memory, print culture, and bibliography.