Altrive Tales

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. 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.

This is a fascinating volume, full of surprises, challenges and confirmations! Gillian Hughes's editorial activities are exemplary: the textual decisions and apparatus inspire confidence and assent, and the genesis of the Tales is pieced together from manuscript evidence in an introduction which is a serious piece of scholarly detective work in its own right! [S]he offers finely-observed, stimulating exegesis which will encourage further readings, and the explanatory notes offer some wonderfully suggestive analogies. Altogether, the volume is a revelation. This is a fascinating volume, full of surprises, challenges and confirmations! Gillian Hughes's editorial activities are exemplary: the textual decisions and apparatus inspire confidence and assent, and the genesis of the Tales is pieced together from manuscript evidence in an introduction which is a serious piece of scholarly detective work in its own right! [S]he offers finely-observed, stimulating exegesis which will encourage further readings, and the explanatory notes offer some wonderfully suggestive analogies. Altogether, the volume is a revelation.