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 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 2 volume edition of Ramsay's poems reflects the fifty-year career of an influential cultural and literary innovator, which will open new avenues for research. Rhona Brown is Senior Lecturer in Eighteenth-Century Scottish Literature and the Periodical Press at the University of Glasgow. Her research specialism is in eighteenth-century Scots language poetry and the history of the periodical press in Scotland, as well as in eighteenth-century club culture and sociability. Brown is author of Robert Fergusson and the Scottish Periodical Press (2012), and co-editor of Before Blackwood's: Scottish Journalism in the Age of Enlightenment (2015).