Description: 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.
Brief description: Craig Lamont is Lecturer in Scottish Studies at the University of Glasgow, working across Scottish Literature and Scottish History. He has worked on the Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Works of Allan Ramsay and the Oxford Edition of the Works of Robert Burns, and has published new editions of Dorothy K. Haynes. He co-edited 1820: Scottish Rebellion, Essays on a Nineteenth-Century Insurrection (2022). His monograph The Cultural Memory of Georgian Glasgow was published by Edinburgh University Press in 2021. His chief research interests are memory, print culture, and bibliography.
Review Quotes:
In this valuable scholarly resource, Brown and Lamont have carefully gathered and edited a variety of materials (prefaces, dedications, pamphlets, unpublished letters, business accounts and even a rebus) to shed new light on Ramsay's central role as a complex cultural figure and entrepreneur in the newly created nation of Great Britain.
--Leith Davis, Simon Fraser University