We’ve been fortunate recently to buy a copy of a book which appears to be the only known copy! It’s called Whiskiana, or the drunkard’s progress. A poem. In Scottish verse (NLS shelfmark AP.1.211.06), and it was printed in Glasgow in 1812: Whiskiana deals with the “evil of habitual intoxication”. The author acknowledges the popular Scots poet Hector Macneill as an inspiration […]
Tag: poetry
Young Romantics: the Shelleys, Byron and other tangled lives
(Photo credit: Bloomsbury. Image above shows the title and author of the book in white and grey text against a black background with a design in white) There is a great myth of the Romantic poet being a solitary, introspective soul. Daisy Hay shatters this myth with her compelling, revelatory group biography Young Romantics.
A man of many talents in the Scottish Enlightenment
We recently bought a collection of Scottish poems (shelfmark: RB.s.2811(1-13)) written in the late 18th century. What makes this small book so interesting is that most of the poems were either written or edited by a physician: Andrew Duncan the elder (1744-1828). Duncan was a key figure in the Scottish Enlightenment, a period which came to an end […]
A recent acquisition: ‘A dramatic dialogue between the King of France and the Pretender’
Earlier this year we bought a 12-page pamphlet containing the poem ‘A dramatic dialogue between the King of France and the Pretender’ (Shelfmark: RB.m.701). The work was printed in London in 1746. Interestingly, it is not recorded in David F. Foxon’s ‘English verse, 1701-1750 a catalogue of separately printed poems with notes on contemporary collected editions’ (London: Cambridge […]
Sonnet for National Poetry Day
Today is National Poetry Day, and what better way to celebrate than with a sonnet? The popular image of the Calvinism of the Scottish Reformation is that it was a dour religion with no time for art. So you may be surprised to hear that this sonnet can be found in nothing less than the […]