Forthcoming James Hogg Conference: Call for Papers

Hogg’s Worlds Now

The James Hogg Society is delighted to announce that we will be holding a conference at the University of Glasgow on July 2-4, 2027. We warmly invite paper proposals that engage with any aspect of Hogg’s life and writing and with the broader community of authors associated with Scottish Romanticism. The first volume of The Stirling / South Carolina Research Edition of the Collected Works of James Hogg was published over thirty years ago now, and the edition is still ongoing, with several collections of Hogg’s periodical publications recently released. Considering the progress of this edition and other major editorial projects in Scottish Romantic studies (i.e., Galt, Lockhart, Scottish Women Writers), as well as new theoretical developments, this conference invites you to consider new ways of reading Hogg and his world.

We particularly welcome proposals from graduate students, postgraduate students, and early career scholars.

Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:

● Editing the works of the Scottish Romantics

● The Blackwood’s Circle (including John Gibson Lockhart, William Maginn, David Macbeth Moir, Walter Scott, John Galt, John Wilson)

● James Hogg and periodical culture

● Scottish women writers of the Romantic period and their relationship to Hogg and his world

● Hogg and transatlantic Scottish Romanticism

● New archival, bibliographical, and editorial approaches to Hogg

● Hogg’s afterlives, including adaptations and fan culture

● Reading Hogg and the Scottish Romantics through a Green or Blue Humanities lens

● James Hogg and Animal Studies

● Dis/ability in the works of Hogg and his contemporaries

● Theorizing Hogg’s treatment of Jacobitism in light of Leith Davis and Kevin James’s new edited collection, Shaping Jacobitism, 1688 to the Present: Memory, Culture, Networks (Edinburgh University Press, 2025)

● Hogg, colonization, empire, and/or Indigeneity

● Race and ethnicity in the works of the Scottish Romantics

● Hope in the unsettled age of the Scottish Romantics

● Scottish Romanticism and literary play/playfulness

Given Hogg’s tendency to challenge traditional forms, this conference will disrupt elements of the traditional conference, including different forms of presentations that allow for more time to discuss the ideas our attendees bring to the table. We welcome proposals for twenty-minute conference papers and for panels with a variety of formats, including roundtables.

Please submit a 250-word abstract by 31 December 2026 to Sharon Alker at alkersr@whitman.edu. Please address any questions to Sharon Alker.

New Issue of Studies in Hogg and his World Published

Studies in Hogg and his World 

Issue No. 33–34, 2024–2025

Contents

Special Issue: Unsettling Scottish Literature

ARTICLES

Unsettled ‘Being-in-the-World’: Ontology, Ecology, and Class in James Hogg’s ‘Surpassing Adventures of Allan Gordon’

Holly Faith Nelson and Sharon Alker 

Witnessing, Law, and the Time of the Ghost in James Hogg’s Late Stories

Penny Fielding

Posthumous Revenge and Self-Harm in James Hogg’s Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner

Ellie Hinds 

A Removing Against the Bankrupts: The Hoggs’ Eviction of 1779

Angus Sutherland 

NOTES

The ‘Small River Called Ellan’: Location and Significance of an Unsettling Encounter in James Hogg’s Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner

Alan V. Murray

James Hogg and Francis Jeffrey: A Re-Discovered Letter and its Background

Patrick Scott

REVIEWS

Remediating the 1820s, edited by Jon Mee and Matthew Sangster

Reviewed by Paul Keen

Caricature and Realism in the Romantic Novel, by Olivia Ferguson

Reviewed by Ian Haywood

Mary Wollstonecraft and Political Economy: The Feminist Critique of Commercial Modernity, by Catherine Packham

Reviewed by Elizabeth Frazer

Wordsworth’s Trauma and Poetry: 1793–1803, by Richard E. Matlak

Reviewed by Philip Shaw

Lawrie Todd: or The Settlers in the Woods, by John Galt. Edited by Regina Hewitt

Reviewed by Rhona Brown 

Kirkyard Romanticism: Death, Modernity and Scottish Literature in the Nineteenth Century, by Sarah Sharp

Reviewed by Silke Stroh

Regional Romanticism: Literature and Southwest Scotland, c. 1770–1830, by Gerard Lee McKeever

Reviewed by Dana Graham Lai

Bogle Corbet: or the Emigrants, by John Galt. Edited by Katie Trumpener

Reviewed by Holly Faith Nelson

Update: Call for Papers: Next Issues of 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 September 1, 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.

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.