Studies in Scottish Literature

This is the second annual volume of Studies in Scottish Literature to be issued in the new series, and the third in the new format. Contributors come from the U.S., Australia, Scotland, and elsewhere in the U.K. The volume opens with a tribute to the journal's founder G. Ross Roy (1924-2013) by Carol McGuirk, followed by a symposium of invited contributions and sections of full-length articles, original documents, and reviews. This volume’s symposium is titled “Divergent Authenticities: Editing Scottish Literary Texts.” After an introduction giving background on Scottish responses to changes in editorial theory, the symposium includes an opening essay by Alison Lumsden on the relations of textual editing to literary criticism, contributions by Tricia McElroy (on editing Renaissance poetry), Gillian Hughes (on editing letters), and Ian Campbell (on the special issues raised by a 20th century writer, Lewis Grassic Gibbon), and a wide-ranging concluding commentary from Ian Duncan. The much-expanded section of articles includes: Theo van Heinsbergen on Seneca in Renaissance Scotland; Alex Benchimol on the Scots Magazine in the 1730s and 40s; Kenneth Simpson on Burns and Rhetoric; William Christie on the Edinburgh Review and the early 19th century Knowledge Economy; Colin Carman on Scott and Disability; John Gardner on the quashing of revolution in post-Waterloo Scotland; Christi Di Frances on Stevenson; and Scott Hames on the role of vernacularity in current literary and political debate. The illustrated section of Notes and Documents includes: a newly-discovered early manuscript source for Burns’s Patriarch letter; an unrecorded Scott letter about John Clare; and the manuscript music for “The German Lairdie” that Burns sent to James Johnson. The volume closes with a review-article by Holly Crocker on a recent study of late medieval Scottish court poetry.