Anecdotes of Scott [Hardcover]

James Hogg (Author), Jill Rubenstein (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 15, 1999 | Series: Collected Works of James Hogg

James Hogg's candid reflections regarding his long friendship with Walter Scott were barred from publication by Scott's son-in-law, who objected to the "beastly and abominable things" within it. Rubenstein has produced a meticulous new edition which includes both Hogg's original manuscript, as well as an extensively revised version that he arranged to publish in the U.S.

Editorial Reviews

Review

On the evidence [of this volume] Hogg is a writer of enormous versatility, ambition and literary accomplishments whose work ought to feature on every Romantic syllabus. The editors of SSC are making this possible for the first time - Romanticists should seize the opportunity. This is not an account of Scott but of Scott's relationship with Hogg or, perhaps more accurately, of Hogg's relationship with Scott. What makes it in the end fascinating and compelling reading is that Hogg does not present us with a balanced and distanced account of someone else's life but rather opens up to us a particularly interesting relationship between two people, a relationship which attracts our attention because, like real-life relationships, it is not without its ups and downs, its tensions and disturbances ... This edition presents two rather different versions of Hogg's anecdotes of Scott ... These two texts are expertly edited and fully and helpfully annotated by Jill Rubenstein while Douglas Mack has provided an authoritative history of the genesis of the text with very full quotation from the relevant correspondence. Jill Rubenstein's excellent introduction to these texts provides us, amongst other things, with a balanced and perceptive account of the two writers' complex relationship, avoiding the temptation to redress the errors of his own time by presenting Hogg merely as the victim of Scott's snobbery and recognising instead that Scott's attitude to Hogg was ambivalent ... There is a lot more that could be said of these fascinating and complex texts ... we have not before had the two manuscript versions brought together in one volume. We can now compare within the one volume the subtle but significant variations between the two original manuscripts of what Jill Rubenstein has rightly called, for all the complexities of Hogg's attitude to his subject, 'the tribute of one remarkable man to another, both flawed and both admirable, living in a remarkable time.' The impression given by the edition as a whole [is] that the editorial task has been undertaken with a peculiar degree of commitment and with a determination that a long-postponed duty towards James Hogg will now be undertaken with a thoroughness which should stand the test of time. On the evidence [of this volume] Hogg is a writer of enormous versatility, ambition and literary accomplishments whose work ought to feature on every Romantic syllabus. The editors of SSC are making this possible for the first time - Romanticists should seize the opportunity. This is not an account of Scott but of Scott's relationship with Hogg or, perhaps more accurately, of Hogg's relationship with Scott. What makes it in the end fascinating and compelling reading is that Hogg does not present us with a balanced and distanced account of someone else's life but rather opens up to us a particularly interesting relationship between two people, a relationship which attracts our attention because, like real-life relationships, it is not without its ups and downs, its tensions and disturbances ... This edition presents two rather different versions of Hogg's anecdotes of Scott ... These two texts are expertly edited and fully and helpfully annotated by Jill Rubenstein while Douglas Mack has provided an authoritative history of the genesis of the text with very full quotation from the relevant correspondence. Jill Rubenstein's excellent introduction to these texts provides us, amongst other things, with a balanced and perceptive account of the two writers' complex relationship, avoiding the temptation to redress the errors of his own time by presenting Hogg merely as the victim of Scott's snobbery and recognising instead that Scott's attitude to Hogg was ambivalent ... There is a lot more that could be said of these fascinating and complex texts ... we have not before had the two manuscript versions brought together in one volume. We can now compare within the one volume the subtle but significant variations between the two original manuscripts of what Jill Rubenstein has rightly called, for all the complexities of Hogg's attitude to his subject, 'the tribute of one remarkable man to another, both flawed and both admirable, living in a remarkable time.' The impression given by the edition as a whole [is] that the editorial task has been undertaken with a peculiar degree of commitment and with a determination that a long-postponed duty towards James Hogg will now be undertaken with a thoroughness which should stand the test of time.

About the Author

Jill Rubenstein is Professor of English at the University of Cincinnati.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 200 pages
• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press; Revised edition (July 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0748609334
• ISBN-13: 978-0748609338
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,488,299 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Man of the People Looks Fondly at Sir Walter Scott, His Friend, February 2, 2007

By 

T. Patrick Killough "All about Patrick" (Black Mountain, NC United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Anecdotes of Scott (Collected Works of James Hogg) (Paperback)

When he was 30 years old, Sir Walter Scott went in search of a simple Lowland Scotch shepherd named James Hogg. Scott was pursuing old ballads of the Borderlands and had heard that Hogg knew many himself and that his friends and relatives knew many more. This rumor proved true and within minutes a friendship began spanning three more decades until Scott's death in 1832.

Scott saw more literary talent in "the Ettrick Shepherd" than the shepherd initially did in himself. Under Scott's guidance, Hogg created ballads of great power and popularity. Scott was almost rudely critical of Hogg's prose tales, but Hogg won popularity for those as well. And Sir Walter was not shy about proudly introducing his rural friend into aristocratic and literary circles of Scotland and England.

Glimpses of Scott at work and play, in good and bad health, drinking with friends and romping with children and grandchildren are scattered through Hogg's little Memoirs of his world-famous friend. They seem to have quarreled often about their relative literary merits. Once Hogg was so irritated by Scott's criticism of a recent work that he started to leave Scott's home in a huff. Scott begged him to stay, asking him not to take his frankness amiss. Hogg replied: " ... it is the greatest folly in the world for me to be sae. But one's beuks are like his bairns, he disna like to hear them spoken ill o', especially when he is conscious that they dinna deserve it." Once Scott implied that Hogg aimed too high literarily. Hogg interjected: "Dear Sir Walter, ye can never suppose that I belang to your school of chivalry! Ye are the king o' that school, but I'm the king of the mountain and fairy school, which is a far higher ane nor yours."

It is hard when reading Hogg on Scott not to think of Mark Twain's famously savage attacks on the Baronet in LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI. Both Hogg and Twain (Samuel Clemens) were of simple backgrounds and little formal education. Both saw Walter Scott's faults, especially his deference to the aristocracy and a social world based on class distinctions. Mark Twain even blamed the U.S. Civil War on Scott's IVANHOE and on Scott's filling American Southerners with nonsensical ideas about religion, history, lost causes, dashing hotheaded aristocratic men and willowy young ladies. But Hogg, who knew the Laird of Abbotsford close up, also saw the kindest man he ever knew, the truest friend, the great writer never too busy to drop everything to receive a visitor high or low.

There is no special reason to read James Hogg's Memoirs if you are not very curious about Sir Walter Scott. But if you love Scott and demand to know all there is to know of him, then the Ettrick Shepherd is indispensable. -OOO-