Collected Letters of James Hogg, Volume 1, 1800-1819

The late Douglas S. Mack was formerly Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Stirling. 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. Robin MacLachlan is Hogg Society Treasurer and an independent scholar.

The introductory and contextual materials are exemplary, the explanatory notes are astoundingly detailed, and the letters themselves blaze with Hogg's wit, iconoclasm, and ambition! Highly recommended. It is difficult to do justice to the richness of this long volume! What is astonishing is that a complete edition of this corresondence has not been available before. That one should even begin to assess Hogg's letters in the company of the great Romantic epistolists is an indication of the importance of Gillian Hughes's first volume. There is much still to look forward to : the second volume is shortly to appear! All Romanticists are indebted to be splendid Stirling-South Carolina Collected Edition. In view of Hogg's central role in the writers' workshop this edition of his letters has considerable importance, not only for students of Hogg but for historians of Scottish culture! Gillian Hughes rises to the challenge magnificently!Hughes's biographical and contextual commentary, drawing profitably on the indispensable Murray archive, is unfailingly helpful. Lucid, well-informed and sound of inference, it supplies, without wordiness, exactly the background most readers will need to appreciate the letters. -- Alistair Fowler Scotland has produced many great letter writers, Burns, Hume, Boswell, Byron, Scott, Stevenson and MacDiarmid. With the first volume of this collection, Hogg joins them and he has been admirably edited. Gillian Hughes gives us an excellent introduction, with clear, brief and useful notes after each letter and short biographies of the major correspondents at the end. These correspondents include Walter Scott, Lord Byron and Robert Southey among writers and the publishers WiIliam Blackwood, Archibald Constable and John Murray. They provide an insight into the atmosphere of the literary world of the time. -- Paul Henderson Scott This first volume of the Letters takes its place alongside the larger and hugely impressive Stirling/South Carolina edition of the collected works of Hogg, published (like the Edinburgh edition of the Waverley Novels) by Edinburgh University Press in a handsome and long-lasting form! The Letters in this first volume are a sampler that makes the subsequent ones all the more keenly anticipated: but the editorial decisions here have wisely made this volume complete and readable in itself, with extensive notes to each letter - printed after the letter and not grouped unhandily at the rear - a concise note on the text, good biographical summaries, and splendidly managed scholarship throughout! Drunk or sober (and in one letter he confesses he was "half-seas over" last night), serious or comic, he emerges as a sharp-witted man of business who was also an extraordinary writer. And some of his best work lies ahead in future volumes. -- Ian Campbell The introductory and contextual materials are exemplary, the explanatory notes are astoundingly detailed, and the letters themselves blaze with Hogg's wit, iconoclasm, and ambition! Highly recommended. It is difficult to do justice to the richness of this long volume! What is astonishing is that a complete edition of this corresondence has not been available before. That one should even begin to assess Hogg's letters in the company of the great Romantic epistolists is an indication of the importance of Gillian Hughes's first volume. There is much still to look forward to : the second volume is shortly to appear! All Romanticists are indebted to be splendid Stirling-South Carolina Collected Edition. In view of Hogg's central role in the writers' workshop this edition of his letters has considerable importance, not only for students of Hogg but for historians of Scottish culture! Gillian Hughes rises to the challenge magnificently!Hughes's biographical and contextual commentary, drawing profitably on the indispensable Murray archive, is unfailingly helpful. Lucid, well-informed and sound of inference, it supplies, without wordiness, exactly the background most readers will need to appreciate the letters. Scotland has produced many great letter writers, Burns, Hume, Boswell, Byron, Scott, Stevenson and MacDiarmid. With the first volume of this collection, Hogg joins them and he has been admirably edited. Gillian Hughes gives us an excellent introduction, with clear, brief and useful notes after each letter and short biographies of the major correspondents at the end. These correspondents include Walter Scott, Lord Byron and Robert Southey among writers and the publishers WiIliam Blackwood, Archibald Constable and John Murray. They provide an insight into the atmosphere of the literary world of the time. This first volume of the Letters takes its place alongside the larger and hugely impressive Stirling/South Carolina edition of the collected works of Hogg, published (like the Edinburgh edition of the Waverley Novels) by Edinburgh University Press in a handsome and long-lasting form! The Letters in this first volume are a sampler that makes the subsequent ones all the more keenly anticipated: but the editorial decisions here have wisely made this volume complete and readable in itself, with extensive notes to each letter - printed after the letter and not grouped unhandily at the rear - a concise note on the text, good biographical summaries, and splendidly managed scholarship throughout! Drunk or sober (and in one letter he confesses he was "half-seas over" last night), serious or comic, he emerges as a sharp-witted man of business who was also an extraordinary writer. And some of his best work lies ahead in future volumes.