• Home
• MAIN MENU
  • About the Project
  • Staff
  • Contact
• BIBLIOGRAPHIES
  • American Periodical Press
  • Songs & Scores
• THE COLLECTION
  • View all Entries
  • Books
  • Periodicals
  • Newspaper Entries
  • Songs & Scores
  • Poetry
• SEARCH THE COLLECTION
  • 
    
  • Advanced Search
• MEDIA
  • Images
  • Audio

• Print Friendly Pages
• Text Only Site
• Back

Staff Login Username : Password :

About the Project

This website has been established to assist the dissemination of some of the research outcomes of a major research grant awarded in 2002 by the United Kingdom’s Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB) to the late Professor Douglas Mack of the University of Stirling. The grant was awarded to assist aspects of the work of the Stirling / South Carolina Research Edition of the Complete Works of James Hogg.

Preparation of the website has been funded by a supplementary grant awarded in 2006 by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), successor body to the AHRB.

The Stirling / South Research Edition of James Hogg

Founding General Editor
The late Professor Douglas Mack

General Editors
Professor Ian Duncan
Dr Suzanne Gilbert

While he was a young man, the Scottish poet and novelist James Hogg (1770–1835) was a self-educated shepherd. As a result, although his contemporaries regarded him as a man of powerful and original talent, it was also felt that his lack of education caused his work to be marred by frequent failures in discretion, in expression, and in knowledge of the world. Worst of all was Hogg's lack of what was called 'delicacy', a failing which caused him to deal in his writings with subjects (such as prostitution) which were felt to be unsuitable for mention in polite literature.

After Hogg's death, his Victorian publishers took pains to smooth away what they considered to be the rough edges of his writing, and to remove his numerous 'indelicacies'. The resulting editions offer a comparatively bland and lifeless version of Hogg's texts, and as the nineteenth century progressed he gradually came to be regarded as a minor figure, of no great importance or interest.

In recent years Hogg has come to be regarded as a major writer whose true stature was not recognised in his own lifetime because his social origins led to his being smothered in genteel condescension; and whose true stature was obscured after his death, because of a lack of adequate editions. The poet Douglas Dunn wrote of Hogg in the Glasgow Herald in September 1988: 'I can't help but think that in almost any other country of Europe a complete, modern edition of a comparable author would have been available long ago'. The Stirling / South Carolina (S/SC) Edition of James Hogg (founding General Editor, Douglas Mack) seeks to fill the gap identified by Douglas Dunn. When completed the edition will run to thirty-nine volumes, and it will cover Hogg's prose, his poetry, his letters, and his plays. The Stirling / South Carolina Edition is being published by Edinburgh University Press (EUP). Details are available on the EUP website at http://www.euppublishing.com/series/HOGG

The S/SC volumes listed below have already been published. Volumes are numbered in the order of their publication in the Stirling / South Carolina Research Edition.

1. The Shepherd's Calendar, edited by Douglas S. Mack (1995)
2. The Three Perils of Woman, edited by David Groves, Antony Hasler, and Douglas S. Mack (1995)
3. A Queer Book, edited by P. D. Garside (1995)
4. Tales of the Wars of Montrose, edited by Gillian Hughes (1996)
5. A Series of Lay Sermons, edited by Gillian Hughes; with Douglas S. Mack (1997)
6. Queen Hynde, edited by Suzanne Gilbert and Douglas S. Mack (1998)
7. Anecdotes of Scott, edited by Jill Rubenstein, with Douglas S. Mack (1999)
8. The Spy, edited by Gillian Hughes (2000)
9. The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, edited by P. D. Garside, with an Afterword by Ian Campbell (2001)
10. The Jacobite Relics of Scotland, volume 1: First Series, edited by Murray G. H. Pittock (2002)
11. Winter Evening Tales, edited by Ian Duncan (2002)
12. The Jacobite Relics of Scotland, volume 2: Second Series, edited by Murray G. H. Pittock (2003)
13. Altrive Tales, edited by Gillian Hughes (2003)
14. The Queen's Wake, edited by Douglas S. Mack, with Meiko O'Halloran and Janette Currie (2004)
15. The Collected Letters of James Hogg, volume 1: 1800–1819, edited by Gillian Hughes, with Douglas S. Mack, Robin MacLachlan and Elaine Petrie (2004)
16. Mador of the Moor, edited by James E. Barcus, with Janette Currie and Suzanne Gilbert (2005)
17. Contributions to Annuals and Gift-Books, edited by Janette Currie and Gillian Hughes (2006)
18. The Collected Letters of James Hogg, volume 2: 1820–1831, edited by Gillian Hughes, with Douglas S. Mack, Robin MacLachlan and Elaine Petrie (2006)
19. The Forest Minstrel, edited by Peter Garside and Richard Jackson, with musical notations by Peter Horsfall
20. The Mountain Bard, edited by Suzanne Gilbert
21. The Collected Letters of James Hogg, volume 3: 1832–1835, edited by Gillian Hughes, with Douglas S. Mack, Robin MacLachlan and Elaine Petrie.
22. The Bush Aboon Traquair and The Royal Jubilee, edited by Douglas S. Mack.
23. Contributions to Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, volume I: 1817–1828, edited by Thomas C. Richardson.
24. Midsummer Night Dreams and Related Poems, edited by the late Jill Rubenstein and completed by Gillian Hughes with Meiko O'Halloran
25. Highland Journeys, edited by Hans de Groot (2010)

The remaining S/SC volumes are currently in preparation:

The Brownie of Bodsbeck, edited by Valentina Bold
Dramatic Tales, edited by Robin MacLachlan
Contributions to Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, volume 2: 1829–1835, edited by Thomas C. Richardson
Contributions to Edinburgh Literary Periodicals, edited by Graham Tulloch and Judy King
Contributions to Fraser's Magazine, edited by Gillian Hughes
Contributions to Various Periodicals
Memoir of Burns, edited by. G. Ross Roy and Patrick Scott
Miscellaneous Songs, edited by Kirsteen McCue, with Janette Currie
The Poetic Mirror, edited by Antony Hasler
The Three Perils of Man, edited by Graham Tulloch and Judy King
Scottish Pastorals, Together with Other Early Poems and 'Letters on Poetry', edited by Suzanne Gilbert
The Shepherd's Guide, edited by Hans de Groot
Songs by the Ettrick Shepherd, edited by Kirsteen McCue, with Janette Currie
Uncollected Writings, edited by Gillian Hughes

The AHRB grant

The AHRB grant of 2002 has supported various aspects of the research of the S/SC edition, including work by Dr Gillian Hughes towards her three-volume S/SC edition of Hogg's Collected Letters. Some aspects of the AHRB-funded research have found (or will find) a natural and satisfactory means of dissemination through the publication of S/SC volumes. For other aspects of the research, however, the present website offers exciting opportunities for additional means of dissemination.

The website

At its launch in 2007, this website sets out to disseminate outcomes of AHRB-funded research by providing:

• a full listing by Dr Janette Currie of early American publications of Hogg texts. This listings is accompanied by the full text of what seems to be a previously unrecorded Hogg short story ('Death at Sea').
• a full listing by Dr Currie of early sheet publications of Hogg's songs, together with digitised reproductions of various Hogg song-sheets, and texts of the songs.
• downloadable recordings of performances of selected Hogg songs. The performances are by Dr Kirsteen McCue (Department of Scottish Literature, University of Glasgow); David Hamilton (Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama); and Sheena Wellington, who memorably sang Burns's 'For a' that and a' that' at the opening ceremony of the Scottish Parliament in 1999. All three are noted performers of material of this kind, and Dr McCue is currently working (with Dr Janette Currie) on an edition of Hogg's Songs, by the Ettrick Shepherd (1831), for the Stirling / South Carolina Research Edition of The Collected Works of James Hogg. Some of the performances by Kirsteen McCue and David Hamilton were recorded live at the major international conference on 'Scottish Romanticism in World Literatures' held on 7–10 September 2006 at the University of California at Berkeley.

The website was created by Andrew Wilson, University of Stirling, and has been designed to leave open the possibility of expanding it in the future, in order to disseminate outcomes of other aspects of the research of the S/SC edition.