This book aims to transform academic and popular perception of this influential and often misrepresented Scottish poet of the mid-eighteenth century. It offers the first full, consistent and transparently edited textual edition of Fergusson’s works alongside extensive annotations, collation of textual variants, explanatory notes and an expanded Scots glossary. Fergusson’s textual legacy has been repeatedly corrupted since his death in 1774, and editors have taken several liberties with the poet’s texts, language and presentation.The present edition strips away these interventions to present Fergusson’s entire corpus, including manuscript texts which have not yet been incorporated into the poet’s known works, offering the first reliable edition of Fergusson’s works for a twenty-first-century academic audience in the context of the 250th anniversary of Fergusson’s death in 2024.
