Search results for ""Author Gillian Hughes""

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.

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In this collection of short stories Hogg focuses on the Scottish civil war of 1644-45, in which the Marquis of Montrose led his royalist forces in a series of stunning victories against the odds before his final defeat at Philiphaugh. Each of Hogg's five tales centres on one of the five major battles of Montrose's brilliant but ultimately futile campaign. Each tale is utterly different from the others in genre and tone, but taken together they build up a composite picture of what it was like to experience the 'anarchy and confusion' of the time at first hand. The importance of Tales of the Wars of Montrose was long obscured by the fact that the publisher of the first edition seriously mangled Hogg's text, not least by including an unrelated sixth tale in order to bulk out the collection to the commercially-expected norm of three volumes. Gillian Hughes has restored Hogg's coherent five-tale collection, and by returning to Hogg's manuscripts in preparing her edition she has made possible the first appearance in print of an uncensored text of this lively and innovative collection.

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Altrive Tales was carefully prepared by Hogg in 1832 as the opening volume in a planned twelve-volume collected prose fiction series, intended as the culmination of his career as a storyteller. It opens with his 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. Hogg's sharp eye for the latest publishing phenomena and pawky self-mocking humour is evident in his awareness of Altrive Tales as a contribution to the monthly-volume classic fiction series of the early 1830s following Sir Walter Scott's magnum opus edition of the Waverley Novels. Frankly pleading guilty to the egotism of presenting his own output to the world as a literary classic Hogg engagingly confesses, 'I like to write about myself: in fact, there are few things which I like better [...]'. 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 and extensively annotated, presents Altrive Tales as a major achievement by one of Scotland's finest storytellers.

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Hogg's extremely rare periodical of 1810-11 shows him reacting to the writers, personalities, and locales of Scotland's capital city after his move to Edinburgh from Ettrick and his career-change from shepherd and farmer to professional author. His characteristically astute and idiosyncratic vision reveals a rather different city from that of Walter Scott and Francis Jeffrey, and his band of contributors form another audience for his work than the middle-class Tories associated with the later Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. The Spy includes early versions of some of Hogg's best-known poetry and prose besides a wealth of fascinating lesser-known material. This is the first edition of The Spy since the original edition of 1810-11 was published, and offers a carefully corrected text, full annotation, notes on Hogg's contributors to his paper, and a history of its making. It represents an advance in our knowledge both of Hogg's early writing career and of the city he encountered early in the nineteenth century.

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Stevenson's unfinished masterpiece, Weir of Hermiston, has been entirely re- edited from his final manuscript, revealing a rather different novel from the bowdlerised version produced posthumously by his friends. Stevenson revisits the conflicted Scotland of James Hogg and Sir Walter Scott as well as that of his own youth, but also responds to recently published novels. A substantial essay explores the complex early publication history of the novel on both sides of the Atlantic, and exceptionally full explanatory notes and other background information are provided.

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'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.

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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.

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In 1822 Rudolph Ackermann's Forget Me Not [...] for 1823 established a fashion for handsomely produced and copiously illustrated annual anthologies of short literary works. Books of this kind were designed as Christmas and New Year's presents, and in the 1820s and 1830s they became a significant publishing phenomenon. Like other well-known writers of the time (including Wordsworth, Scott, and Letitia Elizabeth Landon), Hogg was a contributor to the annuals, and Contributions to Annuals and Gift-Books brings together all the Hogg texts that were either written for, or first published in, annuals and gift-books. 'Invocation to the Queen of the Fairies' in the Literary Souvenir for 1825 was Hogg's first known contribution to an annual, and thereafter writing for the annuals became 'a kind of business' for him during the economic slump of the late 1820s. Contributions to Annuals and Gift-Books contains some of Hogg's finest short stories (for example 'The Cameronian Preacher's Tale' and 'Scottish Haymakers'), as well as some of his best-known poems (for example 'A Boy's Song' and 'The Sky Lark'). This volume highlights a coherent part of Hogg's total literary output, and in doing so provides new insights into an area of nineteenth-century publishing history that is attracting increasing interest and attention. Hogg was a professional writer with an acute awareness of the shifting trends of the literary marketplace during the 1820s and 1830s, when annuals were at their peak of popularity. However, his literary objectives did not always match the needs of the annuals, and as a result some of his contributions were returned as unsuitable for a family-oriented audience. Hogg's sometimes complex negotiations with the editors and publishers of the annuals are meticulously documented in Contributions to Annuals and Gift-Books. In this context, the volume (for example) reprints both Hogg's manuscript version of 'What is Sin?', and the version actually published in Ackermann's Juvenile Forget Me Not. The engravings for which Hogg wrote are included in the present volume.

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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

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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.

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The first complete edition of Peter's Letters since 1819 Offers an eyewitness account of Scotland at a key point in its cultural history Includes fully edited text and apparatus Genesis and publishing history of the work Provides detailed and precise annotations In Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk (1819) the young John Gibson Lockhart (under the guise of an elderly Welsh physician) portrayed and analysed the society of Regency Glasgow and Edinburgh in terms of German nationalist and Romantic criticism. Focusing on the networks of the law, the church, the universities, fine art, antiquarianism, literature, theatre, and periodical culture he provided a series of brilliant, sometimes serious and sometimes satirical, portraits of the most notable characters of the day and the institutions they represented, and his text is accompanied by a series of portrait engravings and of vignettes of significant moments in his tour. This edition presents the first complete text of this widely-allusive work published since 1819, together with the substantial notes that a modern reader requires to understand it fully. The editorial apparatus also comprises a detailed index and an essay on the contemporary illustrations.

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'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.

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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.

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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.

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