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The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Works of Allan Ramsay

The Prose of Allan Ramsay

Edited by Rhona Brown and Craig Lamont

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£105.00

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About this book

Provides the first reliable textual edition of all extant prose writings by Allan Ramsay
  • Prints several of Ramsay’s prose texts for the first time
  • Copytext based on both print and fresh diplomatic transcription of manuscript sources
  • Offers a full account of manuscript-to-print textual variants and detailed contextual annotation

Transforming academic and popular understanding of this pivotal but, until now, largely under-researched literary figure, this volume offers the first full and consistent edition of Allan Ramsay’s prose. The volume contains all extant prose writings, from both manuscript and print sources. As well as all known letters, the volume includes prefaces, dedications and advertisements for Ramsay’s major collections. It also contains Ramsay’s anonymously-published Some Few Hints in Defence of Dramatical Entertainments, the full text of his influential collection of Scots Proverbs and significant prose from manuscript sources, including Ramsay’s account of Edinburgh’s Porteous Riots in April 1736 and notes on contemporary plays. In these works, we see Ramsay’s consistent and steadfast commitment to preserving Scottish literary culture, and gain a privileged insight into Ramsay’s personality, his priorities, ambitions and core beliefs.

Reviews

In this valuable scholarly resource, Brown and Lamont have carefully gathered and edited a variety of materials (prefaces, dedications, pamphlets, unpublished letters, business accounts and even a rebus) to shed new light on Ramsay’s central role as a complex cultural figure and entrepreneur in the newly created nation of Great Britain.

...it is a surprising and readable volume, providing a revealing window into eighteenth-century British theatre, Edinburgh life, and of course biographical details about Ramsay and about his son, the painter Allan Ramsay, Jr.
Table of contents

Acknowledgements AbbreviationsGeneral Editor’s Preface Biography of Allan Ramsay

Introduction to Prose

TEXT

List of Letters Letters Miscellaneous Prose Advertisement, The Battel (1716) Preface, Tartana (1718) Dedication and Advertisement, Christ’s Kirk on the Green (Edinburgh: William Adams, 1718) Advertisement, Christ’s Kirk on the Green (Edinburgh: Ruddiman, 1718) Dedication, Robert, Richy and Sandy (1721) Advertisement, Poems (1721) Advertisement 2, Poems (1721) Dedication and Preface, Poems (1721) List of Fables (c.1722) Advertisement, Fables and Tales (1722) Preface, The Fair Assembly (1723) Dedication, ‘The Pleasures of Improvments in Agriculture Plant Gard’ (1723) Dedication and Preface, The Ever Green (1724) Preface, The Gentle Shepherd (1725) Some Few Hints In Defence of Dramatical Entertainments (c.1728) Dedication, Poems (1728) Preface, Tea-Table Miscellany (Dublin, 1729) A Collection of Scots Proverbs, More Complete and Correct than Any Heretofore Published (1737) Notes on Sir David Lindsay’s Language (1724–43) Notes on Theatre in Edinburgh (c. early 1730s)

Undated Prose The Court

Notes on The Fair Quaker of Deal Notes on The Doating Lovers Notes on The Basset Table Notes on The Artful Husband Notes on The Apparition

Appendix 1: Habberdashery account of Allan Ramsay to Sir Robert Menzies (1718) Appendix 2: Deed of Corporation of the Edinburgh Academy of St. Luke (1729) Appendix 3: The Ramsay and Cooper Rebus (c.1725–38)

NOTES

Letters Miscellaneous Prose Undated Prose

Appendix 1 Appendix 2 Appendix 3Glossary Bibliography

About the contributors

Rhona Brown

Rhona Brown is Professor of Scottish Textual Cultures at the University of Glasgow. Her research is focused on Scottish literature of the eighteenth century, particularly poetry in Scots, literary and cultural networks of the period and the early Scottish periodical press. She has published widely on eighteenth-century Scottish poetry and has had a particular focus the work of Robert Fergusson; her first monograph was Robert Fergusson and the Scottish Periodical Press (2012). She is an expert on the eighteenth-century periodical press, and was co-editor, with Alex Benchimol and David Shuttleton, of Before Blackwood’s: Scottish Journalism in the Age of Enlightenment (2015). Rhona is also an experienced textual editor, having edited Allan Ramsay’s Poems (2 Volumes, 2023) and co-edited, with Dr Craig Lamont, Ramsay’s Prose (2024).

Craig Lamont

Craig Lamont is Lecturer in Scottish Studies at the University of Glasgow, working across Scottish Literature and Scottish History. He has worked on the Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Works of Allan Ramsay and the Oxford Edition of the Works of Robert Burns, and has published new editions of Dorothy K. Haynes. He co-edited 1820: Scottish Rebellion, Essays on a Nineteenth-Century Insurrection (2022). His monograph The Cultural Memory of Georgian Glasgow was published by Edinburgh University Press in 2021. His chief research interests are memory, print culture, and bibliography.

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