Robert Burns: References & Edit History

The standard edition of Burns’s letters is J. De Lancey Ferguson (ed.), The Letters of Robert Burns, 2nd ed., edited by G. Ross Roy, 2 vol. (1985). Among the fullest modern biographies is James Mackay, RB: A Biography of Robert Burns (1992; also published as A Biography of Robert Burns, 1993; reissued as Burns: A Biography of Robert Burns, 2004). J. De Lancey Ferguson, Pride and Passion: Robert Burns, 1759–1796 (1939, reissued 1964), offers an admirable portrait of Burns the man. Other biographies include David Daiches, Robert Burns (1950, reissued as Robert Burns: The Poet, 1994); Robert Crawford, The Bard: Robert Burns (2009); Ian McIntyre, Robert Burns: A Life, rev. and updated ed. (2009); and Patrick Scott Hogg, Robert Burns: The Patriot Bard (2008). Thomas Crawford, Burns: A Study of the Poems and Songs (1960, reissued 1994), is a critical and scholarly study. Gavin Sprott, Robert Burns: Pride and Passion (1996), provides a perceptive account of the poet’s life and environment. Gerard Carruthers (ed.), The Edinburgh Companion to Robert Burns (2009), is a compilation of scholarly essays on Burns’s life and works. Carol McGuirk, Reading Robert Burns: Texts, Contexts, Transformations (2014), supplies an important reassessment.

Burns’s first collection, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1786), known as the Kilmarnock edition, contains 44 of Burns’s best-known poems. The Edinburgh edition (1787) adds 22 poems, including “Address to the Unco Guid, or the Rigidly Righteous” and “The Brigs of Ayr.” The last version to be supervised by Burns, 2nd ed., 2 vol. (1793), adds another 18, including “Tam o’ Shanter.”

James Johnson, Robert Burns, and Stephen Clarke, The Scots Musical Museum, 6 vol. (1787–1803), includes some 200 songs and fragments, with some airs, written, revised, or collected by Burns. More than 70 of Burns’s songs are included in the first 5 vol. of George Thomson (compiler), A Select Collection of Original Scotish Airs for the Voice (1793–1818).