The Best Laid Schemes: Selected Poetry and Prose of Robert Burns - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1846970946 ISBN 13: 9781846970948

Publisher: Birlinn Ltd, 2008

Synopsis

From a Scottish as well as an international perspective it is time for a new and wide-ranging selection of Burns's verse aimed both at general readers and Burns aficionados. Newly edited from early printed texts and from manuscripts, The Best Laid Schemes is the only substantial selection of Burns's work in print which has line-by-line glossing of the Scots words. Burns himself added a concluding general glossary to his book, but many modern readers will prefer simply to run their eye along the line for a gloss, rather than having to ferret around at the back of the volume. As well as containing outstanding examples of Burns's prose, this selection also includes some rediscovered verse, printed from manuscript and available in no other editions. The background to this 'new' work is set out in a separate section. Here are Burns's best-loved poems along with a full selection of the work which shows his sheer mastery of form, his political interests, his enthusiasms and loves. Seamus Heaney has written in praise of Burns's 'art speech'. This book aims to help readers attend sympathetically to a masterfully constructed, remarkable, and freshly accessible poetic voice.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"This is an excellent, comprehensive, and authoritative selection of the writings of one of the world's major poets, and it is likely to become the standard edition for general readers and students."--Ian Duncan, University of California, Berkeley

About the Author:

Robert Crawford is Professor of Modern Scottish Literature at St Andrews University, where his teaching interests include Scottish Literature, Modern and Contemporary Poetry, T. S. Eliot, and Creative Writing. He has taught there since 1989 having previously worked at the universities of Oxford and Glasgow. An acclaimed and award-winning poet in both English and Scots (Sharawaggi, Polygon 1990), Robert is also a highly respected poetry editor. With Simon Armitage he edited The Penguin Book of Poetry from Britain and Ireland since 1945 (1998) and with Mick Imlah The New Penguin Book of Scottish Verse (2000). As the sole editor his work includes New Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (Polygon, 2008), Heaven-Taught Fergusson (Tuckwell, 2003), The Book of St Andrews (Polygon, 2005) and Apollos of the North (Polygon, 2006). Robert is a founding editor of the magazine Verse and has served as a judge for the T. S. Eliot Prize, the National Poetry Competition, amongst others. Christopher MacLachlan is his colleague from the School of English at St Andrews.

About this edition

• Publisher: Birlinn Ltd
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1846970946
• ISBN 13: 9781846970948
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352
• Editor: Crawford Robert, MacLachlan Christopher