Hogg began in the 1790s by sending poems and songs to the Scots Magazine and wrote for periodicals ranging from literary magazines to agricultural journals until the very end of his life. His collected work for Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine was recently published in the Stirling/South Carolina Edition, and volumes of Hogg’s contributions to other Scottish periodicals and to Fraser’s Magazine are in preparation. Hogg’s periodical writing ranged far more widely than this, however, and the uncollected work is spread across many dozens of titles and several continents. While Hogg’s relationships with the Scottish publishing world have become well documented, other than some intriguing hints, until recently little research had been done on Hogg’s writing published in periodicals beyond Scotland.

Filling this significant gap requires a critical edition of Hogg’s writing for magazines and newspapers in England, Ireland, North America, Australia, and New Zealand. This material is being collated into a single volume, Contributions to International Periodicals, for the Stirling/South Carolina Research Edition of Hogg’s work, contracted for publication by Edinburgh University Press. Edited by Adrian Hunter, this critical edition will complete the available record of Hogg’s writing, and will include many items that have never before been reprinted.

Since the contents of this volume have never before been collected or subject to scholarly appraisal or editing, the first task facing the editorial team has been to locate and identify texts in the form of their first publication. A significant number of original items in English and North American newspapers and magazines have already been identified; and investigations have likewise noted contributions to Irish, Australian, New Zealand, and Caribbean publications. Secondly, this project aims to provide a reliable, scholarly text. It will account for the composition, publication, and reception of each piece, and provide full explanatory notes, a glossary, and an index. It will present a scholarly introduction that explains these materials in relation to Hogg’s career, and that contextualises them within early-nineteenth-century print culture. Thirdly, the research will clarify how readers outside of Scotland received Hogg’s writing and how these audiences participated in the literary culture of Romantic-era Scotland.

Beyond this volume, findings will benefit other volumes currently in preparation: Hogg’s contributions to Fraser’s Magazine (edited by Megan Coyer, University of Glasgow) and Scottish literary periodicals other than Blackwood’s (edited by Graham Tulloch and Judy King, University of Flinders, Australia). The investigation also touches on Hogg’s publication in newspapers.

For research towards this volume, a three-year AHRC large research grant (2014-2017) was awarded to Suzanne Gilbert (Principal Investigator) and Adrian Hunter (Co-Investigator) at the University of Stirling. The award also funds the work of a researcher, Barbara Leonardi, and a related PhD studentship, held by Duncan Hotchkiss.

Project Team

Suzanne Gilbert is Senior Lecturer in English Studies at the University of Stirling, specialising in Scottish and Romantic literature. She shares with Ian Duncan (Berkeley) the general editorship of the Stirling/South Carolina Research Edition of Hogg’s works. For the series, she co-edited Queen Hynde (1998) with Douglas Mack, and edited The Mountain Bard (2007) and Scottish Pastorals, Together with Other Early Poems and ‘Letters on Poetry’ (forthcoming). She writes widely on Scottish literature, Scottish women’s writing, and oral traditions, and is currently completing a monograph on the ballad as a genre (Routledge).

Adrian Hunter is Senior Lecturer in English Studies at the University of Stirling. He has published widely on British and North American 19th- and 20th-century literature, with a particular interest in the short story. His edition of Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner has been in print continuously since 2001; a revised and updated edition is currently in preparation. He is editing, with the assistance of Barbara Leonardi, a volume for the Stirling/South Carolina Research Edition of Hogg’s works: Contributions to International Periodicals. This volume will mark the culmination of a three-year AHRC-funded research project on Hogg and periodical publication. Also in preparation are two articles on Alice Munro, both of which touch on Hogg and on Munro’s treatment of Scottish religious and cultural inheritance in Canada; and The Edinburgh Companion to the Short Story, co-edited with Paul Delaney.

Barbara Leonardi is an AHRC-funded Early Career Researcher working on the Stirling/South Carolina Research Edition of the Collected Works of James Hogg at Stirling University. Her AHRC-funded doctoral thesis ‘An Exploration of Gender Stereotypes in the Work of James Hogg’ was awarded the 2014 Professor G. Ross Roy Medal at the Saltire Literary Awards for the top PhD thesis in the field of Scottish literature submitted in 2013. She has published widely on James Hogg and gender. In Stirling, she teaches British Romanticism and Stylistics. Her research interests lie on the intersections of gender with class and race in the construction of national and imperial ideologies in the long nineteenth century.

Duncan Hotchkiss is an AHRC-funded PhD candidate at the University of Stirling, researching James Hogg’s short fiction and the periodical press. Alongside his research, Duncan teaches English Studies at Stirling, and works in widening participation and access to higher education in Scotland. He has worked in academic and public libraries, including both Glasgow University Library and Scottish Borders Council Library HQ in Selkirk – his hometown. With undergraduate and masters degrees in History from the University of Glasgow and a professional education qualification from the University of Strathclyde, his research interests lie more broadly in book history and in working and labouring-class literary history. He is also interested in improving public access to research in Scottish cultural studies, and in the application of current models of research-led pedagogical practice into the university environment.