James Hogg Exhibition: Ettrick Primary School

Daphne Jackson and a small team of organizers have set up and now operate the James Hogg Exhibition in Ettrick Primary School. The Scottish Borders Council has kindly permitted the exhibition to be housed for a two-year period in the school. Efforts to move the exhibition from Bowhill House to Ettrick Primary School began in May of this year. Of the new exhibition, Mrs. Jackson writes, "It was professionally designed by Iain Black who designed the original exhibition at Aikwood Tower and we are very pleased with the result." The inaugural celebration, which took place on June 2, 2013, was aptly described in the June 7, 2013 issue of the Selkirk Weekend Advertiser:  

A crowd of more than 100 had gathered for the opening, which was also addressed by Judy Steel on behalf of the Buccleuch Living Heritage Trust. She spoke on the history of the exhibition and brought a message from Scottish author and Inspector Rebus creator, Ian Rankin, one of the current crop of contemporary Scottish writers greatly influenced by Hogg. Also in attendance was local Scottish Borders councillor Vicky Davidson, who spoke about the forthcoming James Hogg creative residency at the school and thanked all those who had made this possible.

The admired Scottish actor Donald Douglas appeared as James Hogg at the event:
  

"Donald Douglas as James Hogg at the Exhibition Opening 02.06.2013

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Rab Wilson has been appointed the first James Hogg Writer in Residence and will also serve as the exhibition's curator. He and Stewart Sanderson will be hosting a creative writing workshop on Saturday, September 7, 2013 at Boston Hall in the Ettrick Valley.

--Holly Faith Nelson

James Hogg Creative Writing Day

Adapting The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner for the Twenty-First Century Screen

Odilon Redon (1840-1916), Les Fleurs du Mal (1890 Drawing).©ARTstor Slide Gallery.  

The Scottish producer David Murdoch, of Sinner Films in Glasgow, Scotland, is currently working on a film based on James Hogg’s Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner.  The project, envisioned as a “psychological feature thriller,” according to Murdoch, will be directed by the Danish director Adam Neutzsky-Wulff. Neutzsky-Wulff recently directed The Stranger Inside (2013), which was well received by critics and will be distributed across the globe by Sony. The Cambridge-born actress Rosie Day, well known for her work in The Seasoning House (2012), may play the lead in the adaption of Confessions by Sinner Films.  Sinner Films is currently in talks with Kaleidoscope to distribute the adaptation of Hogg's Private Memoirs and Confessions in the U.K. 

Murdoch is undertaking this project, in which Hogg’s novel is reworked for a (post)modern audience, with an experienced Irish producer, giving it Celtic roots. However, Murdoch is also interested in making it a transatlantic venture, and is still looking for private investors on both sides of the Atlantic.  If you wish to support the project, please contact David Murdoch at david@sinnerfilms.com.

--Holly Faith Nelson

James Hogg, Southern Africa, and the Orangutan

 
From Thomas H. Huxley, Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature (London and New York, 1863), 16. 
Image from the Gutenberg edition: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2931/2931-h/2931-h.htm.

One of James Hogg’s works on which there is very little contemporary criticism is his short story “The Pongos:  A Letter from Southern Africa,” an epistle dated October 1, 1826. However, in Hogg’s lifetime, the story was well received in Britain, published in the Americas, and even translated into French (“Les Pongos,” Revue de Paris, 1833, vol. 56). As early as 1838, Hogg’s story was referred to as “Hogg’s famous Pongos” (Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 5).

In the story, the letter writer William Mitchell (writing from Vander Creek near Capetown) tells of the abduction of his young son William by orangutans (pongos) and later of his pregnant wife Agnes. William falsely suspected for some time that Karoo, the Kousi chief, had abducted Agnes, since Karoo had earlier attempted to buy Agnes for four oxen.  By the time William discovers the whereabouts of his wife, son, and two-year old daughter Beatrice (born in “captivity”), Agnes has become a ruler of the orangutans and is capable of giving forceful speeches to “her subjects,” accompanied by grand gesticulations, ultimately persuading the pongos to permit her and the children to leave with her husband (which the orangutans had earlier refused). These events lead William Mitchell to immediately move to Vander Creek and to prepare to immigrate to Sydney. He hopes that his children’s breeding “among creatures that must still be conceived to be of the brute creation” will never be discovered by the Australians. 

This story is a rich source of information on the understanding of gender, race, evolution, language, nature and culture in the first few decades of the nineteenth century, particularly from the perspective of a Scottish working-class author.  

“The Pongos” is included in James Hogg’s The Altrive Tales (1832). A copy of the 1832 edition of The Altrive Tales is available on Google Books.

For recent criticism on "The Pongos," see:

Alker, Sharon, and Holly Faith Nelson. “Empire and the ‘Brute Creation’: The Limits of Language in Hogg's ‘The Pongos.’” James Hogg and the Literary Marketplace: Scottish Romanticism and the Working-Class Author. Ed. Sharon Alker and Holly Faith Nelson. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009. 201-217.  

Vigne, Randolph. Thomas Pringle: South African Pioneer, Poet and Abolitionist. Woodbridge: James Currey, 2012. 221-222. [Vigne’s reading contests aspects of Alker and Nelson’s interpretation of the story.]

—Holly Faith Nelson

James Hogg Conference April 9 – April 12, 2015

"James Hogg and His World"
Location: Alumni Hall, Victoria College, University of Toronto

Tentative Schedule

Thursday, April, 9, 2015
4:00 – 5:30 p.m. Registration and Reception

5:30 p.m.  Official Opening: Prof. Alan Bewell, Chair of English, University of Toronto

5:45 p.m.  Introduction of the Douglas Mack Lecturer: Dr. Robin MacLachlan

6:00 p.m.  Douglas Mack Lecture: Prof. Angela Esterhammer, University of Toronto

Friday, April 10, 2015
Panels on the life and work of James Hogg and / or his contemporaries as well as on James Hogg’s world.

Evening: Free Time (some options for entertainment include local theatre, concerts, opera)

Saturday, April 11, 2015
Panels on the life and work of James Hogg and / or his contemporaries as well as on James Hogg’s world.

Evening Banquet: Place and Time TBA

Banquet Speaker: Prof. Peter Richardson, Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies, University of Toronto.  Prof. Richardson is a direct descendant of Isabella Richardson (Tibby Shiels), Hogg’s close friend and possible paramour.

Banquet Recital: Meredith Hall, soprano, and Bernard Farley, guitar -- songs by Burns, Hogg, and others.

Sunday, April 12, 2015

Morning / Early Afternoon Excursion to Elora (gorge; church choir) and Fergus (Highland settlement with Scottish shop, including a bookshop).  Return by 3:00 p.m. or earlier.

Conference Coordinator

Dr. Hans de Groot, University of Toronto (hans.degroot@interlog.com)

Conference Programme Directors

Dr. Sharon Alker, Whitman College (alkersr@whitman.edu)

Dr. Holly Faith Nelson, Trinity Western University (holly.nelson@twu.ca) 

The James Hogg Conference is Co-Sponsored by Victoria College and the 

Department of  English in the University of Toronto.