Rhona Brown – författare

Though Robert Fergusson published only one collection of poems during his lifetime, he was a fixture in the Scottish periodical press. Rhona Brown explores Fergusson's poetic output in its immediate periodical context, enabling a new understanding of Fergusson's contribution to poetry that also enlarges on our understanding of the Scottish periodical press. Focusing on the development of his career in Walter Ruddiman's Weekly Magazine, Brown situates Fergusson's poetry alongside contemporary events that expose Fergusson's preoccupations with the frivolities of fashion, theatrical culture, the economic status of Scottish manufacture, and politics. At the same time, Brown offers fascinating insights into the political climate of Enlightenment Scotland and shows the Weekly Magazine in relationship to the larger Scottish and British periodical milieus. She concludes by exploring reactions to Fergusson's death in the British periodical presses, arguing that contrary to critical consensus, the poet's death was ignored neither by his own country nor by the larger literary community.

Transforming academic and popular understanding of this pivotal but, until now, largely under-researched literary figure, this volume offers the first full and consistent edition of Allan Ramsay's prose. The volume contains all extant prose writings, from both manuscript and print sources. As well as all known letters, the volume includes prefaces, dedications and advertisements for Ramsay's major collections. It also contains Ramsay's anonymously-published Some Few Hints in Defence of Dramatical Entertainments, the full text of his influential collection of Scots Proverbs and significant prose from manuscript sources, including Ramsay's account of Edinburgh's Porteous Riots in April 1736 and notes on contemporary plays. In these works, we see Ramsay's consistent and steadfast commitment to preserving Scottish literary culture, and gain a privileged insight into Ramsay's personality, his priorities, ambitions and core beliefs.

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.

Though Robert Fergusson published only one collection of poems during his lifetime, he was a fixture in the Scottish periodical press. Rhona Brown explores Fergusson's poetic output in its immediate periodical context, enabling a new understanding of Fergusson's contribution to poetry that also enlarges on our understanding of the Scottish periodical press. Focusing on the development of his career in Walter Ruddiman's Weekly Magazine, Brown situates Fergusson's poetry alongside contemporary events that expose Fergusson's preoccupations with the frivolities of fashion, theatrical culture, the economic status of Scottish manufacture, and politics. At the same time, Brown offers fascinating insights into the political climate of Enlightenment Scotland and shows the Weekly Magazine in relationship to the larger Scottish and British periodical milieus. She concludes by exploring reactions to Fergusson's death in the British periodical presses, arguing that contrary to critical consensus, the poet's death was ignored neither by his own country nor by the larger literary community.

The definitive text of Allan Ramsay's poems, presenting his uncollected works chronologically for the first time, with comprehensive explanatory notesOffers the fullest edition of Ramsay's poems to date, in which previously undiscovered texts expand his known literary corpusProvides a definitive text of Ramsay's poems in which uncollected works are presented chronologically for the first timeDetailed 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 contextsAllan 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.