English Language and Literature Commons^™

Discusses the continuing value of older, prephotographic, facsimiles of Burns's manuscripts, and illustrates a variety of examples of Burns's handwriting from Victorian guide for autograph collectors, and the evidence they can provide to Burns editors. .

Discusses different 19th century claims about whether Burns wrote the poem "What ails ye now" (Kinsley 119B, also known as "Robert Burns's Answer," "A Letter to a Taylor," "Reply to a Trimming Epistle from a Tailor," and "Answer to a Trimming Epistle"), which was not published in Burn's lifetime, and for which no manuscript in Burns's hand is known; describes and illustrates, a contemporary or near-contemporary manuscript in another hand that has numerous variants from the early printed text; and examines the possible relationship between the two texts and their implications for the authorship debate.

Based on the recent census of the surviving copies of Robert Burns's first book, Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (Kilmarnock, 1786) (Young and Scott, 2017), discusses and illustrates the different forms in which it has been preserved, contrasting the original wrappers with later fine bindings, but also illustrating several contemporary bindings with which the original owners replaced the temporary wrappers, suggesting that these give a better indication of the social range of Burns's first readers.

--following up a marginal annotation in the late G. Ross Roy's annotated copy of Egerer's Burns bibliography, reprints an 1815 letter by Burns's friend Dr John Mackenzie in the Irvine and County of Ayr Miscellany, which included the first publication of Burns's short poem inviting Mackenzie to a masonic dinner, and also of Burns's letter to Mackenzie, dated January 11, 1787.

A talk written for the planning workshop on Burns bibliography at the National Library of Scotland, March 16, 2017, convened by Gerard Carruthers and Robert Betteridge, in association with the University of Glasgow's Centre for Robert Burns Studies and the AHRC-funded project Editing Burns for the 21st Century.