'It will be a grand book for thae Englishers for they winna understand a word of it' Hogg's boast to William Blackwood Witty, humorous and comical as the title implies, the eccentric nature of many of the poems collected here nevertheless belies the often serious and moral issues contained within. Newly available in paperback, and including many of Hogg's better known longer pieces, the present volume is based on the first edition of A Queer Book to be published since 1832 - though the similarity between the two editions ends with the running order. While the text for the original edition was substantially reworked by the publisher to smooth out Hogg's use of Scots, this volume brings together manuscripts from all over the world to provide material as near to his final copy as possible. The result is a vibrant collection including many poems which have never been studied critically before. A thorough introduction to the best of Hogg's poetry.

First published in 1823, Hogg's powerful novel combines two stories that hauntingly echo each other, one set in Edinburgh and the Scottish Borders in the early 1820s, and the other set in the Highlands in 1746, the time of Culloden and its devastating aftermath. The Three Perils of Woman subversively challenges many of the attitudes and assumptions of the established elite of Hogg's day, for example by refusing to gloss over what it calls 'the disgrace of the British annals', the atrocities committed by the Duke of Cumberland's victorious army in the Highlands after Culloden. Likewise, in its story of the 1820s Hogg's novel questions prevailing social attitudes to prostitution and other matters. The Three Perils of Woman had an interested but shocked and hostile reception on its first publication, and this controversial text was omitted from all the nineteenth-century collected editions of Hogg's works. It remained out of print from the 1820s until its republication in 1995 in the new Stirling / South Carolina edition of Hogg published by Edinburgh University Press, on which the present edition is based.Since 1995 The Three Perils of Woman has come to be seen as a book of outstanding interest and importance. 'Commentators once dismissed Perils of Woman as a bad book because it trampled on the flowerbeds of early-nineteenth-century decorum; they now acclaim it a masterpiece for the very same reason, reading subversive craft in the place of oafishness.' Ian Duncan, Studies in Hogg and his World 'Both stories [of The Three Perils of Woman] are generically diverse, self-consciously impure. Hogg described them as 'domestic tales', apparently soliciting a female readership whose delicacy he then assaults with speculations about promiscuity and prostitution, and with prayers so chattily informal that reviewers found them blasphemous. Both stories modulate suddenly from comedy to tragedy, though one - but which?- struggles through to what may be a happy ending. [...] What matters about The Three Perils of Woman is not the conclusions it has to offer about the issues it raises, but the fact that these are addressed with such painful urgency.They have become urgent once again, and will continue to be so; and if the book provides an especially useful way of thinking about them, it's because it offers an 'unflinching' account of a violent national past while acknowledging the temptation, the impulse, even the need, to flinch. ' John Barrell, London Review of Books.

The Queen's Wake is one of the landmarks of British Romantic poetry. It focuses on the return of Mary, Queen of Scots to Scotland in 1561 to take personal rule of her kingdom after her years in France. In the poem poets and bards hold a poetic competition (a 'wake') in Holyrood Palace to welcome the Queen. A key concern of the poem is the state of Scotland in 1561 - a crucial period in Scottish history. The Queen's Wake looks back to the pre-1560 world of Catholic Scotland and explores the tensions between that old world and an emerging modernity. On publication The Queen's Wake was an unexpected popular success, placing Hogg for a while alongside Byron and Scott as one of the most admired British poets of that time. Over the next six years Hogg was encouraged to make substantial revisions, to make the poem even more attractive and saleable. It thus exists in significantly different authorial versions, each reflecting Hogg's circumstances at the time. To best serve the modern reader, this edition presents both the first and fifth edition of the poem.

The third and final volume of the first collected edition of Hogg's letters reveals his versatility in old age. In 1832 he visits London for the first time and becomes the literary lion of the season. As communications improve in the early 1830s, he explores the possibility of writing for American periodicals, and deals (mostly) gracefully with the various claims made on his time as a celebrity author. The loss of old friends is compensated for by a circle of young admirers and prot?g?s, and Hogg turns an acutely observant eye on an age of cheap periodicals and of political reform.

A full editorial apparatus includes biographical notes on his chief correspondents and an overview of this phase of his life. The volume also contains an index to all three volumes of this complete edition of Hogg's letters.

The Queen's Wake is one of the landmarks of British Romantic poetry. It focuses on the return of Mary, Queen of Scots to Scotland in 1561 to take personal rule of her kingdom after her years in France. In the poem poets and bards hold a poetic competition (a 'wake') in Holyrood Palace to welcome the Queen home. In the descriptions of the songs and the people who sing them various Scottish poets of Hogg's own period can be recognised, giving the reader a sense of the condition of poetry in Hogg's Scotland. Another key concern of the poem is the state of Scotland in 1561 - a crucial period in Scottish history, coming a year after the legislation was passed that brought in the Scottish Reformation. The Queen's Wake looks back to the pre-1560 world of Catholic Scotland and explores the tensions between that old world and an emerging modernity. When The Queen's Wake was published in 1813 it proved an unexpected popular success, placing Hogg for a while alongside Byron and Scott as one of the most admired British poets of that time. Over the next six years Hogg was encouraged by major players in the Edinburgh book trade to make substantial revisions, to make the poem even more attractive and saleable. The fifth edition (1819) is an enhanced and carefully polished version from the now established and respected poet. It is markedly different from the edgy, powerful and unsettling first version of The Queen's Wake, which was the work of an impecunious and marginalised outsider. Thus the poem exists in significantly different authorial versions, each reflecting Hogg's circumstances at the time. In recent years a consensus has emerged that in cases of this kind the modern reader is best served by having access to editions of both versions. The Stirling/South Carolina Research Edition of The Queen's Wake therefore presents both the first and fifth edition of the poem. Key Features: * The publication of one of the landmarks of British Romantic poetry * At time of publication the poem's success placed Hogg alongside Burns and Scott as one of the leading writers of the period * Presents both the first and fifth editions of the poem to allow the reader to compare the two * A careful editorial introduction places the poem in its historical context

"The Bush aboon Traquair," like Allan Ramsay's "The Gentle Shepherd," is a pastoral drama with songs, and in this play Hogg celebrates the life of the people of his native community in Ettrick Forest. At times earthy and at times hilarious, The Bush focuses on rural courtship, and it derives part of its energy from its presentation of a contrast between the old ways and an emerging (but not always admirable) modernity. Here, as elsewhere in Hogg's writings, the shepherds and ewe-milkers of Ettrick Forest operate in a pastoral world that is noticeably realistic and convincing. They pursue their love adventures as ardently as if they were inhabitants of the more literary pastoral world of the Forest of Arden, but as they do so they also have to cope with some very unpoetical and very troublesome sheep. It appears that The Bush was first drafted around 1813, but the first publication of Hogg's play came when a bowdlerised version was included in his posthumous Tales and Sketches (1837). Douglas Mack's edition includes the first-ever publication of the unbowdlerised version of "The Bush aboon Traquair,"

Written on the occasion of George IV's famous royal visit to Edinburgh in 1822, The Royal Jubilee is another pastoral drama with songs. In this 'Scottish Mask', Hogg brings a group of representative Scottish spirits to a 'romantic dell' on Arthur's Seat. The spirits (including an Ossianic Highlander who has suffered dispossession, and the ghost of an old Covenanter) give expression to past Scottish grievances against royalty, while indicating their hope that the King's visit will bring renewal and a fresh start. This potentially ambiguous expression of loyalty is further complicated byvarious Jacobite references and echoes as the spirits prepare to welcome a Hanoverian king, returning to the ancient kingdom of his Stuart ancestors.

Hogg was a superb letter-writer, and this is the second volume of the first collected edition of his letters (to be completed in three volumes). Many of the letters have never been published before, or published only in part. They vividly reflect Hogg's varied social experience and shed new light on his own writings and those of his contemporaries. Among his famous correspondents were writers such as Scott, Byron, and Southey, antiquarians such as Robert Surtees, politicians such as Sir Robert Peel, and editors and publishers such as John Murray, William Blackwood, and Robert Chambers. This volume begins with Hogg's preparations for marriage and ends with his taking ship for London for his first and only visit to the literary metropolis. During the intervening years he publishes some of his greatest works. Fighting debt, promoting tourism, maintaining his extensive literary and social circle in Scotland and in London, and writing prolifically, the Hogg of these letters is a Scottish cultural powerhouse.

A full editorial apparatus includes biographical notes on his chief correspondents and an overview of this phase of his life.

Key Features:

* The first ever edition of Hogg's letters to be published

* Includes many letters never previously published

* Features Hogg's correspondence with figures such as Sir Walter Scott, Lord Byron and Sir Robert Peel

James Hogg is one of the acknowledged masters of the short story. Some of his best stories appeared in The Shepherd's Calendar, a work of the 1820s in which he sets out to re-create on paper the manner and the content of the traditional oral storytelling of Ettrick Forest, the remote and mountainous sheep-farming district in which he grew up. Like Hogg's masterpiece The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, several of the stories from The Shepherd's Calendar deal disturbingly and hauntingly with the supernatural, and explore psychological depths with a remarkable insight and intensity. The Shepherd's Calendar also draws on Hogg's experiences as a young shepherd in the 1790s as it produces a convincing and very human picture of the dangers, the pleasures, and the tensions of the lives of the rural poor in Scotland in the years that followed the French Revolution. This paperback is based on the acclaimed hardback edition of The Shepherd's Calendar for the Stirling / South Carolina Collected Works of James Hogg (Edinburgh University Press, 1995).

Hogg was a superb letter-writer, and this is the initial volume of the first collected edition of his letters (to be completed in three volumes). Many of the letters have never been published before, or published only in part. They vividly reflect Hogg's varied social experience and shed new light on his own writings and those of his contemporaries. Among his famous correspondents were writers such as Scott, Byron, and Southey, antiquarians such as Robert Surtees, politicians such as Sir Robert Peel, and editors and publishers such as John Murray, William Blackwood, and Robert Chambers. But there are also letters to shepherds, farmers, aristocrats, musicians, young ladies, and bluestockings. Hogg first appears in this volume in 1800 as a young shepherd with literary ambitions, and becomes the famous author of The Queen's Wake (1813) and a key supporter of the early Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine (1817). Among the final letters it contains are some tender if idiosyncratic love-letters to the Dumfriesshire girl he married in 1820 at the mature age of forty-nine.Hogg's entertaining and informative letters are supplemented by detailed annotation and a full editorial apparatus, including biographical notes on his chief correspondents and a concise overview of this phase of his life. This edition of Hogg's Letters has its roots in the late 1970s and 1980s, when the four founder members of the James Hogg Society (Gillian Hughes, Douglas Mack, Robin MacLachlan, and Elaine Petrie) began work on tracing and transcribing Hogg's surviving letters. The major tasks of completing this work and preparing a full-scale edition of Hogg's Letters were subsequently passed to Gillian Hughes, who is now bringing this important research project to fruition. Key Features: * The first ever edition of Hogg's letters to be published * Includes many letters never previously published * Features Hogg's correspondence with figures such as Sir Walter Scott, Lord Byron and Sir Robert Peel

Heroic, radical and at times hilarious, Queen Hynde is Ossian with jokes; but Hogg's epic has serious purposes in mind. Its picture of the ancient Scottish past has much in common with stories of King Arthur and Camelot; and Queen Hynde aspires to emulate Paradise Lost as a Christian epic.

The Tale of Old Mortality describes the lives - and often violent deaths - the hopes, and the struggles, of the Covenanters in late seventeenth-century Scotland. A tale of extremism, bigotry and cruelty, it is redeemed by its characters' courage and loyalty, and their passionate belief in religious and civil liberty. Considered to be one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century, its influence pervades European writing from Stendhal to Tolstoy.

Lay Sermons offers, playfully, a series of lay sermons on good principles and good breeding - the last thing that one would expect from the pen of Blackwood's Ettrick Shepherd. But a significant part of the joke is that the Shepherd provides lay sermons that combine into a series of wise meditations on life and on literature.

Drawing on the traditional Border folk tales of his youth, Hogg's collection of short stories builds a coherent picture of pastoral life in Southern Scotland in the 19th century. Together, the stories assert the values of the rural folk tradition and ballad literature.

'It will be a grand book for thae Englishers for they winna understand a word of it' Hogg's boast to William Blackwood Witty, humorous and comical as the title implies, the eccentric nature of many of the poems collected here nevertheless belies the often serious and moral issues contained within. Newly available in paperback, and including many of Hogg's better known longer pieces, the present volume is based on the first edition of A Queer Book to be published since 1832 - though the similarity between the two editions ends with the running order. While the text for the original edition was substantially reworked by the publisher to smooth out Hogg's use of Scots, this volume brings together manuscripts from all over the world to provide material as near to his final copy as possible. The result is a vibrant collection including many poems which have never been studied critically before. A thorough introduction to the best of Hogg's poetry.

Scotland was an active -- albeit junior -- partner in the British Empire. But the poorer and more marginalised parts of Scottish society shared something of Ireland's experience of being at the receiving end of British Imperial power. This created a long-lasting, complex, and eloquent debate among Scottish novelists about the nature of Scotland's involvement in the power-structures of British society. Some Scottish writers, such as Sir Walter Scott and John Buchan, did much to generate and promote Imperial Britain's sense of itself, and these authors tended to be part of the Scottish elite. However, an alternative strand of Scottish writing was produced by authors with roots in non-elite, 'subaltern' Scotland -- writers from the past such as James Hogg, Mary Macpherson ('Mairi Mhor nan Oran'), and Lewis Grassic Gibbon, as well as present-day writers such as James Kelman and Irvine Welsh. Douglas Mack argues that such writers actively challenge the elite's Imperial Grand Narrative and demonstrates that Scottish fiction was active and influential both in shaping and in subverting the assumptions that underpinned the Empire. Key Features: * Draws on recent research on Scotland's role in the British Empire, allowing new light to be thrown on the work of some of Scotland's best known writers * Exposes a radical, anti-establishment tradition of Scottish fiction that begins with Hogg and is carried on by writers such as Gibbon, Kelman and Welsh * Highlights the relevance and importance of Scottish fiction for all those interested in post-colonial studies and post-colonial fiction * Develops fruitful connections between the Scottish writers it examines and major writers of the Scottish diaspora such as Alice Munro and Alistair MacLeod

Not reprinted since the 1820s, this book is essentially two stories, one set in highland Scotland after the Battle of Culloden; the second in Hogg's Edinburgh. The book takes as its themes the nature of fiction, and the fictional view of life portrayed in the work of Walter Scott and John Wilson, and the realities of 19th century Scotland. The three perils are allegedly love, leasing (lying) and jealousy highlighting women's place in 19th century society.