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. Thomas C. Richardson is Professor of English Emeritus at Mississippi University for Women. He is the editor of Some Passages in the Life of Mr Adam Blair and The History of Matthew Wald in the Edinburgh Critical Edition of the Works of John Gibson Lockhart, as well as the two-volume edition of James Hogg’s Contributions to Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine in the Stirling / South Carolina Research Edition of the Collected Works of James Hogg.