The Collected Works of James Hogg
5 primary works • 30 total works
Book 1
A collection of thirteen tales and anecdotes, published for the first time as Hogg intended, and capturing the flavour of Border story-telling.
Book 2
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.
'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.
Book 3
'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.
Book 4
In Tales of the Wars of Montrose Hogg continues his examination of Scotland's past. Using different narrators and different moods in each of the five tales that comprise the work, Hogg leads the reader into (and eventually out of) a state of anarchy and confusion in his native country.
Book 5
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.
The Private Memoirs, first published in 1824, is an early psychological novel, in which the phenomena of the split personality and the obsessed character are described with extraordinary insight. Set in the gloomy world of 18th-century Scottish Calvinism, the novel is a story of moral fanaticism, of a mind darkened by and overpowering conviction of its own righteousness. The story concerns two brothers: one murders the other and is in turn destroyed - or destroys himself. It is a book, Andre Gide wrote, "fitted to arouse passionate interest both in those who are attracted by religious and moral questions, and for quite other reasons, in psychologists and artists, and above all in surrealists who are so particularly drawn by the demoniac in every shape."
The book contains vivid pictures of the manners and morals of a chiaroscuro society remarkably similar in some ways to Dostoevsky's, but seen from the outside by a man whose rebellious, independent disposition enabled him to survive in defiance of his own Establishment. It draws on some of the traditions and techniques of the "Gothic" school, but more importantly, it is an early exercise in narrative technique - in its deliberate manipulation of point-of-view - and in psychological realism.
The text of this edition has been carefully collated with the first edition. It contains an introduction by Robert M. Adams, an afterword by Gide, and a glossary of Scottish words and phrases prepared by Mr. Adams.
Hogg's involvement with song collecting and writing spans the whole of his career, from the early 1800s until the early 1830s, and examples are found across all genres of his work - fiction, drama, poetry and in a number of important musical publications. His 1831 collection entitled Songs by the Ettrick Shepherd came about as an attempt to better his difficult financial situation, and is of particular interest and significance. It was published towards the end of his career, and it provides his own retrospective presentation of his lifetime achievement as a song-writer. This critical edition of Hogg's volume makes his songs accessible for the first time. The layout mirrors the original volume which contained 'head notes' by Hogg himself. These notes provide a great deal of factual, biographical and anecdotal information which proves vitally important to our understanding of the development of his role as a song writer and collector. Alongside the text of Songs from 1831, this edition will contain an introduction discussing Hogg's role as a song writer and collector and a detailed account of the creation of the original manuscript.
The Three Perils of Man is regarded as Hogg's most ambitious work of fiction. The book's extraordinary combination of the fantastic, the funny, the serious and the historically realistic must be unique in literature.
The adventures of its characters, told with the author's characteristically bold simplicity, are many, mad, and breathtakingly fast. Ranging from Galloway to Northumberland, the main focus of the book is to be found in the Scottish Borders. Hogg knew and loved the Borders well, and the book is full of their oral tradition and local lore. In his attempt to synthesise this material with history, romance and the high literary ideals of his time, Hogg's nearest modern parallels would be a combination of Tolkien and Iain Banks.
Hogg's fusion of traditional folklore and innovative style was viewed as an anachronism by his contemporaries, and it is only now that his work is recognised s one of the most original and masterly in the Scottish canon.
The adventures of its characters, told with the author's characteristically bold simplicity, are many, mad, and breathtakingly fast. Ranging from Galloway to Northumberland, the main focus of the book is to be found in the Scottish Borders. Hogg knew and loved the Borders well, and the book is full of their oral tradition and local lore. In his attempt to synthesise this material with history, romance and the high literary ideals of his time, Hogg's nearest modern parallels would be a combination of Tolkien and Iain Banks.
Hogg's fusion of traditional folklore and innovative style was viewed as an anachronism by his contemporaries, and it is only now that his work is recognised s one of the most original and masterly in the Scottish canon.
Hogg grew up in rural Ettrick Forest in a notable family of tradition-bearers, and in his first major poetry collection The Mountain Bard of 1807 he claims his rightful position at the centre of that culture. Whereas Scott collected the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border Hogg was the sole author of The Mountain Bard. He learned to negotiate the erudite print culture of Edinburgh with the literary ballad, sometimes helped and sometimes hindered by his powerful friend, shifting the shape of his earlier manuscript and periodical poems accordingly. Then in 1821, when he was an established literary man, he published a revised edition in keeping with his new professional status as Author of The Queen's Wake. The present edition prints together, for the first time, the surviving pre-1807 versions of poems included in The Mountain Bard, the full 1807 collection, and the complete 1821 version.
The Introduction (besides giving a full history of this complex, changing work) places it firmly within the eighteenth-century antiquarian projects of ballad-collecting and the intellectual currents of Romanticism, in particular the literary vogue for the ballad shown in works such as Lyrical Ballads (1798) by Wordsworth and Coleridge. Available in Paperback: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner The Shepherd's Calendar Tales of the Wars of Montrose The Three Perils of Woman Winter Evening Tales Anecdotes of Scott The Queen's Wake Altrive Tales Also Available in Hardback: A Queer Book The Shepherd's Calendar The Three Perils of Woman Tales of the Wars of Montrose Lay Sermons Queen Hynde Anecdotes of Scott The Spy The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner The Jacobite Relics of Scotland (First Series) The Jacobite Relics of Scotland (Second Series) Winter Evening Tales The Queen's Wake Altrive Tales The Collected Letters of James Hogg, Volume 1, 1800-1819
The Introduction (besides giving a full history of this complex, changing work) places it firmly within the eighteenth-century antiquarian projects of ballad-collecting and the intellectual currents of Romanticism, in particular the literary vogue for the ballad shown in works such as Lyrical Ballads (1798) by Wordsworth and Coleridge. Available in Paperback: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner The Shepherd's Calendar Tales of the Wars of Montrose The Three Perils of Woman Winter Evening Tales Anecdotes of Scott The Queen's Wake Altrive Tales Also Available in Hardback: A Queer Book The Shepherd's Calendar The Three Perils of Woman Tales of the Wars of Montrose Lay Sermons Queen Hynde Anecdotes of Scott The Spy The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner The Jacobite Relics of Scotland (First Series) The Jacobite Relics of Scotland (Second Series) Winter Evening Tales The Queen's Wake Altrive Tales The Collected Letters of James Hogg, Volume 1, 1800-1819
James Hogg knew Sir Walter Scott well, and after Scott's death in 1832 he wrote an affectionate but frank account of their long friendship. Hogg arranged for his manuscript to be sent to John Gibson Lockhart, Scott's son-in-law and official biographer; but when Lockhart read the manuscript he declared himself to be filled with 'utter disgust and loathing' at the 'beastly and abominable things' he found it to contain. As a result, Hogg withdrew the manuscript from publication, but later arranged for the US publication of an extensively revised version, Familiar Anecdotes of Sir WalterScott. Professor Rubenstein has produced a meticulous new edition which includes both the first version, Anecdotes of Sir W. Scott and the later version. She provides a wealth of new information about these lively, readable, idiosyncratic, and disconcerting texts."
The Brownie of Bodsbeck and Other Tales consists of an introductory poem, a short novel, and two stories. Hogg shapes this collection in ways that allow him to explore the life of his native district of Ettrick Forest during different historical periods. 'The Hunt of Eildon', a story set in the late Middle Ages, draws on Ettrick's medieval role as royal hunting forest, and on the district's rich traditional culture of oral story-telling and the supernatural. In contrast, 'The Wool-Gatherer' is set in Hogg's own time, and is a love-story complicated by issues concerning wealth and social class. The cornerstone of the collection, however, is the short novel 'The Brownie of Bodsbeck, set during the civil and religious conflicts of the late seventeenth century. Here, as in Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824), Hogg writes with power and insight as he explores the effects of extreme psychological stress. The Brownie is also remarkable for the innovative ways in which it locates narrative authority, not with members of the officer class, but in the voices of the ordinary people of Ettrick. Taken as a whole, The Brownie of Bodsbeck and Other Tales is one of Hogg's major achievements.It is here published as a complete collection for the first time since 1818.
James Hogg's Jacobite Relics - originally commissioned by the Highland Society of London in 1817 - is an important addition to The Collected Works of James Hogg. It created a canon for the Jacobite song which had an enormous influence on subsequent collections, and was of great importance in defining the relationship between the Scottish song tradition and its Romantic editors and collectors. From the first publication of the Relics in 1819 the majority of scholars have argued about how many of them were authored or at least substantially altered by Hogg. Professor Murray Pittock has conducted extensive research in this area since 1987, and has identified many previously neglected or unknown sources from which Hogg would have worked as he developed his collection. He has identified contemporary 17th- and 18th-century sources for the majority of the songs in the edition. This has implications not only for Hogg's integrity as a writer, but for our understanding of the history of the Scottish song as a whole.
The introduction to volume one includes the crucial issue of Hogg's relationship to the Jacobite song tradition, and the place of the Relics within Hogg's career and personal context, facilitating further interpretations of Hogg's range of creative strategies. Considerable annotation accurately communicates the context of the songs and Hogg's relationship to the textuality of Jacobite culture. The introduction to volume two deals with the genesis of the text and Hogg's relationship with the Highland Society. This volume will be available from November 2002.
The introduction to volume one includes the crucial issue of Hogg's relationship to the Jacobite song tradition, and the place of the Relics within Hogg's career and personal context, facilitating further interpretations of Hogg's range of creative strategies. Considerable annotation accurately communicates the context of the songs and Hogg's relationship to the textuality of Jacobite culture. The introduction to volume two deals with the genesis of the text and Hogg's relationship with the Highland Society. This volume will be available from November 2002.
With an Essay on Hogg's Literary Friendships by Janette Currie and an Appendix on the Popular Context by Suzanne Gilbert Scottish popular tradition includes a group of stories about a King who has adventures - amorous and otherwise - as he wanders in disguise among his people. Many of these stories focus on James V and in Walter Scott's long narrative poem The Lady of the Lake (1810) the King encounters a mysterious lady while he is wandering alone and unrecognised in the Highlands. At first sight Scott's heroine seems to be a simple country girl, but she turns out to be a daughter of the great aristocratic house of Douglas, living for the time being in a rural exile. Scott's romantic and aristocratic version of the old 'wandering King' stories was hugely popular in its day, but Hogg subverts and questions this tale in Mador of the Moor (1816). The name 'Mador' suggests 'made o'er', 'made over', and Mador of the Moor is in effect a makeover of The Lady of the Lake. Hogg's poem, like Scott's, tells how a deer-hunt in the Highlands leads a disguised King of Scots into a love-adventure with a young woman.
However Hogg's heroine, Ila Moore, is not a chaste aristocrat but a girl of low social standing who is made pregnant by the wandering King. Ila's inherent resourcefulness and strength of character suggest that a peasant girl pregnant out of wedlock can be a heroine fully worthy of respect, and Mador (rejected as shocking and ridiculous by its original readership), now re-emerges as a flowing and immensely readable narrative that eloquently challenges the deeply-ingrained class and gender prejudices of Hogg's society.
However Hogg's heroine, Ila Moore, is not a chaste aristocrat but a girl of low social standing who is made pregnant by the wandering King. Ila's inherent resourcefulness and strength of character suggest that a peasant girl pregnant out of wedlock can be a heroine fully worthy of respect, and Mador (rejected as shocking and ridiculous by its original readership), now re-emerges as a flowing and immensely readable narrative that eloquently challenges the deeply-ingrained class and gender prejudices of Hogg's society.
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
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 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 proteges, 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.
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
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
The letters in the second volume of Gillian Hughes's pioneering edition vividly reflect Hogg's varied social experience and shed new light on his own writings and those of his contemporaries. His correspondents included major writers such as Scott and Byron, politicians such as Sir Robert Peel, and publishers such as John Murray and William Blackwood. But there are also letters to shepherds, farmers, aristocrats, musicians, young ladies, and bluestockings. In this meticulous and thoroughly researched edition, Hogg's entertaining and informative letters are illuminatingly placed in context by an editorial apparatus that includes full annotation and biographical notes on Hogg's chief correspondents.
Although portrayed as the 'boozing buffoon' of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Hogg (both as the celebrated Ettrick Shepherd and anonymously) was a key contributor of songs, narrative poems, tales, and reviews to the liveliest of all early nineteenth-century periodicals. The present volume includes several items hitherto published only in Blackwood's, and ranges from the infamous 'Chaldee Manuscript' to newly-identified items such as a Scottish commemoration of the coronation of George IV. The volume also includes works Hogg intended for Blackwood's but which are now published for the first time. Hogg's work for his favourite periodical is provided in this volume in full cultural context, including detailed annotation and a convenient and complete editorial apparatus. Also included is music for several of the Shepherd's songs.
This collection is comprised of ten of Hogg's poems which, in very different ways, explore the visionary and supernatural, and the writer's portrayal of them - echoing the subject and title of Shakespeare's famous play. Included among the poems are: 'The Pilgrims of the Sun', which seeks to demonstrate Hogg's command not only of his native Scottish tradition of poetry but also of the English tradition of Milton and Pope; the weirdly brilliant 'Connel of Dee'; 'The Gyre Caryl' in which Hogg recounts the birth of Heavenly Grace and the departure of the fairies from Scotland; and 'Verses Addressed to the Right Honourable Lady Anne Scott of Buccleuch'. Taken together the ten poems of Midsummer Night Dreams and Related Poems substantiate Hogg's vaunted claim to be 'King o' the mountain and fairy school' of poetry.
'I like to write about myself: in fact, there are few things I like better!' So confesses Hogg with pawky self-mocking humour in Altrive Tales. The collection opens with Hogg's own story of how a ragged servant-lad remade himself as a respected professional writer, the associate of Byron, Scott, Southey, Wordsworth and Galt. Hogg's frank and humorous 'Memoir of the Author's Life' is widely recognised as a classic of Romantic autobiography and an important record of early nineteenth-century Scottish culture. The themes of the 'Memoir' continue in the tales that follow. 'The Adventures of Captain John Lochy' is a fast-paced historical fiction, the autobiography of a social outcast adrift in Scotland, Russia, the Netherlands, and Sweden. 'The Pongos' (an early version of the Tarzan story) takes a look at Scottish involvement in the British empire in a comic parody of Enlightenment notions about the nature of man and of society. 'Marion's Jock' is a virtuoso exercise in Scots and in Hogg's ability to communicate the peasant lifestyle of his native Scottish Borders.
This new edition, thoughtfully introduced, extensively annotated and featuring a reading list and Hogg chronology, presents Altrive Tales as a major achievement by one of Scotland's finest storytellers.
This new edition, thoughtfully introduced, extensively annotated and featuring a reading list and Hogg chronology, presents Altrive Tales as a major achievement by one of Scotland's finest storytellers.