Poems of Allan Ramsay

The definitive text of Allan Ramsay’s poems, presenting his uncollected works chronologically for the first time, with comprehensive explanatory notes

• Offers the fullest edition of Ramsay’s poems to date, in which previously undiscovered texts expand his known literary corpus
• Provides a definitive text of Ramsay’s poems in which uncollected works are presented chronologically for the first time
• Detailed 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 contexts

Allan 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.