James Hogg: Selected Poems

by James Hogg, Douglas S. Mack (Editor)

Although James Hogg is regarded as an important novelist, his poetry remains neglected in spite of its high reputation in his lifetime, and even though it won Hogg the friendship and respect of Scott, Wordsworth and Byron. The reason is clear - he wrote too much verse, and his good poems have been submerged by his failures. This edition provides a reliable text of Hogg's best poems and its publication should help to make a revaluation of his poetry possible. There are notes, a chronology, a glossary and a critical introduction. The pieces included in the collection are of a very uneven quality, but two of them - Kilmeny and The Witch of Fife - are without doubt Hogg's most important poems.

183 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

James Hogg was a Scottish poet, novelist and essayist who wrote in Scots and English. As a young man he worked as a shepherd and farmhand, and was largely self-educated through reading. He was a friend of many of the great writers of his day, including Sir Walter Scott, of whom he later wrote an unauthorized biography. He became widely known as the "Ettrick Shepherd", a nickname under which some of his works were published, and the character name he was given in the widely read series 'Noctes Ambrosianae', published in Blackwood's Magazine. He is best known today for his novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. His other works include the long poem The Queen's Wake, his collection of songs Jacobite Reliques, and the novels The Three Perils of Man, The Three Perils of Woman, and The Brownie of Bodsbeck.