Poems of Allan Ramsay
Volumes II and III
Allan Ramsay
Edited by Rhona Brown
- 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.
AcknowledgementsAbbreviationsGeneral Editor’s PrefaceBiography of Allan RamsayIntroduction to Poems TextPoems 1721Poems 1728NotesPoems 1721Poems 1728
AbbreviationsUncollected PoemsDubia Notes Glossary Bibliography Index of First Lines
These volumes engage in a long overdue and commendably serious reappraisal of this long-neglected poet. [...] Solid, well-grounded, and accessible, these valuable new studies mark a truly auspicious beginning for the Edinburgh edition of Ramsay’s collected works.
Author, antiquarian and cultural impresario, Allan Ramsay stands at the heart of Edinburgh's literary Enlightenment and the reanimation, especially, of a vibrant Scots vernacular poetic mode. In this superb edition, Rhona Brown definitively supersedes the haphazard efforts of earlier editors, and gives us this important poet with new clarity and completeness.
