James Hogg’s Gravestone Restored at Last

If you read this blog regularly, you’ll have seen earlier posts (5/7/20; 1/3/21; 1/5/21) reporting that James Hogg’s gravestone in Ettrick Kirkyard had been laid flat on health and safety grounds.

The good news is that the stone is now upright once again after close to five years. The photo below, which was taken by Hogg’s great-great-great-granddaughter Perrine Gilkison, shows the stone back in its proper position.

 

The thanks of all admirers of Hogg and his works go to Thomas Brown & Sons, the Melrose firm of Funeral Directors that generously carried out the restoration free of charge. Thanks must also go to John Nichol, Vicky Davidson and Daphne Jackson and their associates who have been actively promoting the restoration project over the years.

It is planned that money that was earlier contributed to restoring the gravestone will be used to fund a plaque in the churchyard that will transcribe the weathered inscription on it.

Call for Submissions: Studies in Hogg and his World

 

Call for Papers: Studies in Hogg and his World 

The next issue of Studies in Hogg and his World is on the subject of “Unsettling Scottish Literature,” with the intentional play on the idea of “unsettling.” This issue is affiliated with the upcoming research workshop Unsettling Scottish Studies, to be held at Simon Fraser University in November 2024, the first international multi-disciplinary workshop dedicated to decolonizing Scottish Studies. However, the issue will include articles, pedagogical papers, and notes that address all sorts of ways that Scottish literature in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries does, or should, unsettle. Studies in Hogg and his World is a peer-reviewed print journal. Therefore, all articles, pedagogical papers, and notes submitted will undergo the double-blind peer review process. Submissions should be made on or before August 30, 2025 to Dr. Holly Faith Nelson at Holly.Nelson@twu.ca.     

About Studies in Hogg and his World     

Studies in Hogg and his World was established in 1990. Its founding editor was Dr Gillian Hughes, the eminent James Hogg scholar, author of James Hogg: A Life (Oxford University Press, 2007), and editor, co-editor, or associate editor of a great many volumes of Hogg's works for the Stirling / South Carolina Research Edition of the Collected Works of James Hogg. Dr Hughes edited twenty-one issues of Studies in Hogg in his World before handing over the editorship in 2010 to Dr Hans de Groot (1939-2019), Professor Emeritus of the University of Toronto, the editor of the Stirling / South Carolina edition of James Hogg's Highland Journeys, and author of scholarly articles and book chapters on Hogg's works. With the passing of Dr de Groot in 2019, the editorship was taken up by Dr Holly Faith Nelson, Professor of English at Trinity Western University, co-editor, with Dr. Sharon Alker, of James Hogg and the Literary Marketplace: Scottish Romanticism and the Working-Class Author (Ashgate, 2009; Routledge, 2018), and co-author, with Dr Alker, of a series of articles and book chapters on the life and works of James Hogg published over the past two decades.

Ettrick and Yarrow Community Development Company: Upcoming Guided Walk

The  Ettrick and Yarrow Community Development Company has announced that it is "planning a guided walk from Ettrick to St. Mary's Loch to mark 200 years since Confessions was published with a stop at Cowan's Croft, the possible location of the 'Suicide's Grave.'" 

The walk will be held on Saturday, July 20th, 2024. Participants will meet at, and leave from, Honey Cottage in Ettrick at 11:00 a.m.  "Lifts from the Loch will be provided back to Ettrick.  Feel free to bring along a picnic." This will be a 2-3 hour walk with free views." The walk will finish inside Tibbie Shiels Inn for refreshments and hopefully some readings. 

All donations made will go to "the upkeep of the James Hogg Exhibition."  

If you want to receive more information or to book a spot,  please call 07846 505630 or e-mail info@ettrickandyarrow.org.uk .

"The more southerly Ettrick Hills from Ettrick Pen. [L-R]: Loch Fell, Wind Fell, Hopetoun Craig, West Knowe and Croft Head." Courtesy of Wikipedia. 

Edinburgh International Book Festival: 200 Years of the James Hogg's 'Justified Sinner'

2024 marks the 200th anniversary of the publication of Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. To mark the anniversary, this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival includes a special series of six events, which, according to its website, ‘re-examine and reimagine this story, and its bold exploration of the darkest parts of the human soul’.

Events highlighted on the website include:

Grid Iron’s immersive audio and video journey bringing to life pivotal moments from the novel, rescripted by award-winning author Louise Welsh.

New Myths, in which storyteller Kirsty Logan, folksinger Kirsty Law and harpist Esther Swift reimagine the novel in contemporary times through the story of Gillian Tod, who grows up in a cult, drawing on everything from Scottish folk history, feminism and Naomi Klein.

A further layer added to the 2013 theatre piece Paul Bright’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner, when its writer and director reconstruct the text, and their original production, in a Performance Essay in co-production with National Theatre of Scotland for ‘a suitably meta-interpretation that is part-lecture, part-documentary, part-theatre’.

Ian Rankin and Ever Dundas in a Justified Sinner Book Club panel discussion, Cut Up the Justified Sinner poetry workshops, and a special Close Read event with James Robertson, author of the Confessions-influenced novel The Testament of Gideon Mack.

Further details of the Justified Sinner events can be found at https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-festival/whats-on/themes/confessions-374 null

This year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival runs from 10-25 August. Full details of the programme, including how to book, are on the Festival website https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-festival/whats-on Booking opens on 20 June.

 

New Issue of Studies in Hogg and his World

Studies in Hogg and his World

Issue Numbers 31-32, 2022-2023

 

ARTICLES

 

The Ettrick Shepherd Across the British Empire

Barbara Leonardi

 

Identifying Gil-Martin: A Fairy Reading of Hogg’s Justified Sinner

Joshua Dobbs

 

James Hogg in the Ettrick Landscape

Louise Murray, Stephen Pierpoint, and D’Maris Coffman

 

NOTES

 

Characterising John Galt’s ‘Bandana’

Regina Hewitt

 

Further Light on Hogg and the Laidlaws

Gillian Hughes

 

REVIEWS

 

Gerard Lee McKeever, Dialectics of Improvement: Scottish Romanticism, 1786–1831

Reviewed by Kenneth McNeil

 

Kenneth McNeil, Scottish Romanticism and Collective Memory in the British Atlantic

Reviewed by Megan Coyer

 

Barbara Leonardi, Marriage in James Hogg’s Work: Plotting for Gender, Class, and Ethnic Equality

Reviewed by Meiko O’Halloran

 

Murray Pittock, Scotland: The Global History 1603 to the Present

Reviewed by Richard Finlay

 

The Ayrshire Legatees, The Steam-Boat, The Gathering of the West, by John Galt

Edited by Mark Parker

Reviewed by Craig Lamont

 

Contributions to Scottish Periodicals, by James Hogg

Edited by Graham Tulloch and Judy King

Reviewed by Holly Faith Nelson

 

Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk, by John Gibson Lockhart

Edited by P. D. Garside and Gillian Hughes

Reviewed by Nick Smith

ITV News: "Remembering the Life and Work of Scottish poet James Hogg"

For a video on James Hogg and the Scottish Borders, see ITV News article and video on "Remembering the Life and Work of Scottish poet James Hogg" (26 July 2023): https://www.itv.com/news/border/2023-07-26/remembering-the-life-and-work-of-scottish-poet-james-hogg   Learn about the new Hogg trail which Barbara Harrison, from the area's Tourist Association describes as follows: "What we wanted to do was to develop a route around the valleys that would showcase the valleys through the eyes of James Hogg and his poetry and the places he lived and worked." 

Call for Papers: Studies in Hogg and his World (Fall 2023 Issue)

 

Call for Papers: Studies in Hogg and his World 

 

For its next issue, Studies in Hogg and his World seeks articles on works composed by a wide range of Scottish authors during the years that James Hogg was actively publishing: 1801-1835. Articles on Scottish working-class and / or women authors are especially welcome, as are those that connect the works of the Scottish author under study with those of Hogg (although this is not essential). As usual, the journal also seeks articles on the life and writings of Hogg for the upcoming issue, which is scheduled for publication in the Fall of 2023.  Studies in Hogg and his World is a peer-reviewed print journal. Therefore, all articles, pedagogical papers, and notes submitted will undergo the double-blind peer review process. Submissions should be made on or before May 30, 2023 to Dr. Holly Faith Nelson at Holly.Nelson@twu.ca.     

 

About Studies in Hogg and his World     

Studies in Hogg and his World was established in 1990. Its founding editor was Dr Gillian Hughes, the eminent James Hogg scholar, author of James Hogg: A Life (Oxford University Press, 2007), and editor, co-editor, or associate editor of a great many volumes of Hogg's works for the Stirling / South Carolina Research Edition of the Collected Works of James Hogg. Dr Hughes edited twenty-one issues of Studies in Hogg in his World before handing over the editorship in 2010 to Dr Hans de Groot (1939-2019), Professor Emeritus of the University of Toronto, the editor of the Stirling / South Carolina edition of James Hogg's Highland Journeys, and author of scholarly articles and book chapters on Hogg's works. With the passing of Dr de Groot in 2019, the editorship was taken up by Dr Holly Faith Nelson, Professor of English at Trinity Western University, co-editor, with Dr. Sharon Alker, of James Hogg and the Literary Marketplace: Scottish Romanticism and the Working-Class Author (Ashgate, 2009; Routledge, 2018), and co-author, with Dr Alker, of a series of articles and book chapters on the life and works of James Hogg published over the past two decades.