Canongate Burns: The Complete Poems and Songs of Robert Burns

Paperback

Main Details

Title Canongate Burns: The Complete Poems and Songs of Robert Burns
Authors and Contributors      By (author) Robert Burns
By (author) Andrew Noble
By (author) Patrick Scott Hogg
SeriesCanongate Classics
Physical Properties
Format:Paperback
Pages:1120
Dimensions(mm): Height 196,Width 126
Category/GenreLiterary studies - c 1500 to c 1800
Literary studies - poetry and poets
ISBN/Barcode 9781841953809
ClassificationsDewey:811
Audience
General
Edition Main

Publishing Details

Publisher Canongate Books Ltd
Imprint Canongate Classics
Publication Date 1 January 2003
Publication Country United Kingdom

Description

A complete volume of the writer's poetry and songs includes previously unpublished pieces, draws on extensive scholarship and Burn's own letters, and offers supplemental information about his life, early hardships, political beliefs, and literary contexts.

Author Biography

Robert Burns (1759 - 1796) was a Scottish poet and a lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland, and is celebrated worldwide. Along with Walter Scott, he is probably the best known Scottish writer in the world. His life story is often represented as one of sexual and alcoholic excess. Perhaps less well known is the political turmoil of the time, and the physical hardships which he endured, which at one point led him to contemplate emigrating to Jamaica. It was the success of his published poetry that helped change his mind, and he went on to be lionised by Edinburgh society and the literary establishment, as much a misunderstood and sentimentalised "heaven-taught ploughman" as the Ettrick Shepherd. Like James Hogg, Burns wrote scathing satirical poetry such as Holy Willie's Prayer in which he scorned religious bigots and hypocrits.

Reviews

* A magnificent and definitive work of scholarship. A thousand pages long, it provides not only a glossary and a context for the poems, but also a textual and historical note for each poem and song. -- Colm Toibin The Independent * A very fine edition, and the long introduction, which sets out to clear the tangled banks, is alone worth the cover price. -- Andrew O'Hagan The Scotsman * Scholarly and comprehensive. Sunday Telegraph