Author Description

This special issue of <i>Studies in Scottish Literature</i>, guest-edited by Professor Murray Pittock and Dr. Craig Lamont of the University of Glasgow, is the first to focus on the early 18th-century Scottish poet, dramatist, editor, and publisher Allan Ramsay (1786-1758). The contributors are all connected with the major AHRC-funded research project, the <i>Collected Works of Allan Ramsay</i>, based at Glasgow, and published by Edinburgh University Press. Professor Pittock's preface surveys the recent growth of interest in Ramsay, and the role of the Glasgow edition and editorial team in that growth. This is followed by seven essays with new research on different aspects of Ramsay's achievement, including his relation to Scottish Romanticism, sociability in his early poems, the mapping of Ramsay country, Ramsay and 18th century Scoto-Latinity, on ideas of improvement and on the songs in his play The Gentle Shepherd, and on approaches to standardizing written Scots in Ramsay and the Scottish antiquarian Thomas Ruddiman. <p>