Founding General Editor
The late Professor Douglas S. Mack

General Editors
Professor Ian Duncan
Dr Suzanne Gilbert

While he was a young man, the Scottish poet and novelist James Hogg (1770–1835) was a self-educated shepherd. As a result, although his contemporaries regarded him as a man of powerful and original talent, it was also felt that his lack of education caused his work to be marred by frequent failures in discretion, in expression, and in knowledge of the world. Worst of all was Hogg’s lack of what was called ‘delicacy’, a failing which caused him to deal in his writings with subjects (such as prostitution) that were felt to be unsuitable for mention in polite literature.

After Hogg’s death, his Victorian publishers took pains to smooth away what they considered to be the rough edges of his writing, and to remove his numerous ‘indelicacies’. The resulting editions offer a comparatively bland and lifeless version of Hogg’s texts, and as the nineteenth century progressed he gradually came to be regarded as a minor figure, of no great importance or interest.

In recent years Hogg has come to be regarded as a major writer whose true stature was not recognised in his own lifetime because his social origins led to his being smothered in genteel condescension; and whose true stature was obscured after his death, because of a lack of adequate editions. The poet Douglas Dunn wrote of Hogg in the Glasgow Herald in September 1988: ‘I can’t help but think that in almost any other country of Europe a complete, modern edition of a comparable author would have been available long ago’.

The Stirling/South Carolina (S/SC) Edition of James Hogg (founding General Editor, Douglas Mack) seeks to fill the gap identified by Douglas Dunn. The S/SC Edition of Hogg was founded in 1993 as an international venture anchored in Stirling, with Douglas S. Mack as founding General Editor, supported by a global team of volume editors. The first volumes were published in 1995, and the renowned Scottish poet Edwin Morgan observed in 1996 that the process of recovering Hogg was ‘immeasurably helped by the provision of proper and unbowdlerised texts, in many cases for the first time, and in this the ongoing Collected Works will be a milestone’ (Scottish Literary Journal ). Writing for the London Review of Books, Liam McIlvanney (Otago, New Zealand) remarks on how the S/SC Edition has thrown light on texts overshadowed by Hogg’s Confessions: ‘[W]hen the current Collected Works reaches its culmination, Hogg’s great novel should seem a little less oddly unique, and some other astounding books […] may receive their share of belated glory’.

Across academia and creative practice, volumes have been enthusiastically reviewed for their originality, significance, and rigour. The late Susan Manning (Edinburgh) observes that, thanks to the ‘exemplary’ S/SC Edition’, ‘a major Scottish writer whose work has never been subject to serious editorial scrutiny is being put on the map internationally’ (Eighteenth-Century Scotland). Renowned Scottish author James Robertson has acknowledged the importance of the Hogg Edition, writing in The Herald, ‘A quiet revolution in Scottish literary studies has been going on […] The Stirling/South Carolina research edition of the collected works of James Hogg has been steadily forcing a reassessment of one of our best-known but least-read authors’. American professor John Plotz (Brandeis) credits the series’ ‘nuanced account’ of Hogg’s milieu for ‘[setting] the stage perfectly for Hogg’s experiments in undecidability’ (Novel ). For study of Hogg, these volumes are the standard reference, as can be seen in peer-reviewed journal articles and monographs dealing with Hogg and his period (e.g., Penny Fielding’s Scotland and the Fictions of Geography: North Britain 1760–1830 (Cambridge University Press).

The S/SC Edition is being published by Edinburgh University Press (EUP). When completed, it will run to 39 volumes and will cover Hogg’s prose, poetry, songs, letters, and plays.

The S/SC volumes listed below have already been published. Volumes are numbered in the order of their publication.

1. The Shepherd’s Calendar, edited by Douglas S. Mack (1995)

2. The Three Perils of Woman, edited by David Groves, Antony Hasler, and Douglas S. Mack (1995)

3. A Queer Book, edited by P. D. Garside (1995)

4. Tales of the Wars of Montrose, edited by Gillian Hughes (1996)

5. A Series of Lay Sermons, edited by Gillian Hughes, with Douglas S. Mack (1997)

6. Queen Hynde, edited by Suzanne Gilbert and Douglas S. Mack (1998

7. Anecdotes of Scott, edited by Jill Rubenstein, with Douglas S. Mack (1999)

8. The Spy, edited by Gillian Hughes (2000)

9. The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, edited by P. D. Garside, with an Afterword by Ian Campbell (2001)

10. The Jacobite Relics of Scotland, volume 1: First Series, edited by Murray G. H. Pittock (2002)

11. Winter Evening Tales, edited by Ian Duncan (2002)

12. The Jacobite Relics of Scotland, volume 2: Second Series, edited by Murray G. H. Pittock (2003)

13. Altrive Tales, edited by Gillian Hughes (2003)

14. The Queen’s Wake, edited by Douglas S. Mack, with Meiko O’Halloran and Janette Currie (2004)

15. The Collected Letters of James Hogg, volume 1: 1800–1819, edited by Gillian Hughes, with Douglas S. Mack, Robin MacLachlan and Elaine Petrie (2004)

16. Mador of the Moor, edited by James E. Barcus, with Janette Currie and Suzanne Gilbert (2005)

17. Contributions to Annuals and Gift-Books, edited by Janette Currie and Gillian Hughes (2006)

18. The Collected Letters of James Hogg, volume 2: 1820–1831, edited by Gillian Hughes, with Douglas S. Mack, Robin MacLachlan and Elaine Petrie (2006)

19. The Forest Minstrel, edited by Peter Garside and Richard Jackson, with musical notations by Peter Horsfall (2006)

20. The Mountain Bard, edited by Suzanne Gilbert (2007)

21. The Collected Letters of James Hogg, volume 3: 1832–1835, edited by Gillian Hughes, with Douglas S. Mack, Robin MacLachlan and Elaine Petrie (2008)

22. The Bush Aboon Traquair and The Royal Jubilee, edited by Douglas S. Mack (2008)

23. Contributions to Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume I: 1817–1828, edited by Thomas C. Richardson (2008)

24. Midsummer Night Dreams and Related Poems, edited by the late Jill Rubenstein and completed by Gillian Hughes with Meiko O’Halloran (2008)

25. Highland Journeys, edited by Hans de Groot (2010)

26. Contributions to Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume 2: 1829–1835, edited by Thomas C. Richardson (2012)

27. The Three Perils of Man, edited by Graham Tulloch and Judy King (2012)

28. Songs by the Ettrick Shepherd, 1831, edited by Kirsteen McCue, with Janette Currie (2014)

29. Contributions to Musical Collections and Miscellaneous Songs, edited by Kirsteen McCue, with Janette Currie and Megan Coyer (2014)

The remaining S/SC volumes are currently in preparation:

The Brownie of Bodsbeck, edited by Valentina Bold

Scottish Pastorals, Together with Other Early Poems and ‘Letters on Poetry’, edited by Suzanne Gilbert

Memoir of Burns, edited by Patrick Scott

The Hunting of Badlewe and Dramatic Tales, edited by Robin MacLachlan

Contributions to Scottish Literary Periodicals, edited by Graham Tulloch and Judy King

Contributions to International Periodicals, edited by Adrian Hunter, with Barbara Leonardi

Contributions to Fraser’s Magazine, edited by Megan Coyer

The Poetic Mirror, edited by Antony Hasler

The Shepherd’s Guide, edited by Hans de Groot

Uncollected Writings, edited by Sharon Alker and Holly Faith Nelson