Though Robert Fergusson published only one collection of poems during his lifetime, he was a fixture in the Scottish periodical press. Rhona Brown explores Fergusson's poetic output in its immediate periodical context, enabling a new understanding of Fergusson's contribution to poetry that also enlarges on our understanding of the Scottish periodical press. Focusing on the development of his career in Walter Ruddiman's Weekly Magazine, Brown situates Fergusson's poetry alongside contemporary events that expose Fergusson's preoccupations with the frivolities of fashion, theatrical culture, the economic status of Scottish manufacture, and politics. At the same time, Brown offers fascinating insights into the political climate of Enlightenment Scotland and shows the Weekly Magazine in relationship to the larger Scottish and British periodical milieus. She concludes by exploring reactions to Fergusson's death in the British periodical presses, arguing that contrary to critical consensus, the poet's death was ignored neither by his own country nor by the larger literary community.

Though Robert Fergusson published only one collection of poems during his lifetime, he was a fixture in the Scottish periodical press. Rhona Brown explores Fergusson's poetic output in its immediate periodical context, enabling a new understanding of Fergusson's contribution to poetry that also enlarges on our understanding of the Scottish periodical press. Focusing on the development of his career in Walter Ruddiman's Weekly Magazine, Brown situates Fergusson's poetry alongside contemporary events that expose Fergusson's preoccupations with the frivolities of fashion, theatrical culture, the economic status of Scottish manufacture, and politics. At the same time, Brown offers fascinating insights into the political climate of Enlightenment Scotland and shows the Weekly Magazine in relationship to the larger Scottish and British periodical milieus. She concludes by exploring reactions to Fergusson's death in the British periodical presses, arguing that contrary to critical consensus, the poet's death was ignored neither by his own country nor by the larger literary community.

The definitive text of Allan Ramsay's poems, presenting his uncollected works chronologically for the first time, with comprehensive explanatory notes Offers the fullest edition of Ramsay's poems to date, in which previously undiscovered texts expand his known literary corpus Provides a definitive text of Ramsay's poems in which uncollected works are presented chronologically for the first time Detailed collation of texts against all extant manuscript sources and relevant printed editions, and comprehensive explanatory annotations offering new insights into Ramsay's historical, political, literary and religious contexts Allan Ramsay was central to all aspects of Scottish literary culture in the eighteenth century, working simultaneously in editing, playwriting, theatre management, song collecting and bookselling, as well as founding and directing Britain's first circulating library. It was, however, his own original work as a poet which had a transformative influence on the way in which Scottish literature would develop in the ensuing decades and, indeed, centuries. Emerging as a published author in the early 1710s, Ramsay built a remarkably prominent profile as a poet of the Scots language whose work appealed to a diverse range of readers, allowing him to produce prestigious subscribers' editions of his poems in 1721 and 1728 and to continue as a poet until his death in 1758. This definitive and ground-breaking edition of Ramsay's poems reflects the fifty-year career of an influential cultural and literary innovator, which will open new avenues for research.

Social clubs as they existed in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Scotland were varied: they could be convivial, sporting, or scholarly, or they could be a significant and dynamic social force, committed to improvement and national regeneration as well as to sociability. The essays in this volume examine the complex history of clubs and societies in Scotland from 1700 to 1830. Contributors address attitudes toward associations, their meeting places and rituals, their links with the growth of the professions and with literary culture, and the ways in which they were structured by both class and gender. By widening the context in which clubs and societies are set, the collection offers a new framework for understanding them, bringing together the inheritance of the Scottish past, the unique and cohesive polite culture of the Scottish Enlightenment, and the broader context of associational patterns common to Britain, Ireland, and beyond.

During the last half of the eighteenth century, sensibility and its less celebrated corollary sense were subject to constant variation, critique, and contestation in ways that raise profound questions about the formation of moral identities and communities. Beyond Sense and Sensibility addresses those questions. What authority does reason retain as a moral faculty in an age of sensibility? How reliable or desirable is feeling as a moral guide or a test of character? How does such a focus contribute to moral isolation and elitism or, conversely, social connectedness and inclusion? How can we distinguish between that connectedness and a disciplinary socialization? How do insensible processes contribute to our moral formation and action? What alternatives lie beyond the anthropomorphism implied by sense and sensibility? Drawing extensively on philosophical thought from the eighteenth century as well as conceptual frameworks developed in the twenty-first century, this volume of essays examines moral formation represented in or implicitly produced by a range of texts, including Boswell's literary criticism, Fergusson's poetry, Burney's novels, Doddridge's biography, Smollett's novels, Charlotte Smith's children's books, Johnson's essays, Gibbon's history, and Wordsworth's poetry. The distinctive conceptual and textual breadth of Beyond Sense and Sensibility yields a rich reassessment and augmentation of the two perspectives summarized by the terms sense and sensibility in later eighteenth-century Britain.

Social clubs as they existed in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Scotland were varied: they could be convivial, sporting, or scholarly, or they could be a significant and dynamic social force, committed to improvement and national regeneration as well as to sociability. The essays in this volume examine the complex history of clubs and societies in Scotland from 1700 to 1830. Contributors address attitudes toward associations, their meeting places and rituals, their links with the growth of the professions and with literary culture, and the ways in which they were structured by both class and gender. By widening the context in which clubs and societies are set, the collection offers a new framework for understanding them, bringing together the inheritance of the Scottish past, the unique and cohesive polite culture of the Scottish Enlightenment, and the broader context of associational patterns common to Britain, Ireland, and beyond.