Customer Reviews

The Canongate Burns

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This is an exciting edition which I, as a beginning reader of Burns, find myself picking up again and again. In offering the reader a radical Burns, rather than the folksy popular bard, editors Noble and Hogg bring clarity to the image of the poet, though I sometimes worry that it's a false clarity. Their desire to replace the porchiness of the old image with one of radical potency comes through in a sentence like this, describing Burns's challenge to the conservative pro-Hanoverian establishment: "They were faced with someone hyper-literate, fecundly allusive to a degree far beyond their powers in canonical literary and biblical tradition, who could not only talk their pants off but, it was feared, those of their wives and daughters as well" (lii). Burns thereby gets turned into a Jacobinic superhero who had the aristocracy secretly shaking in their boots. This seems like a bit of critical wish-fulfillment. Though hardly unknown, Burns did not have the celebrity that Scott would later have.

Perhaps just as problematic, their repeated aligning of Burns with Romantic poets like Wordsworth implies that Burns was a self-originating genius. While Noble and Hogg offer a magisterial indictment of Burns's posthumous de-politicization which anyone interested in the period should read, they spend far less time commenting on his much more obscure 18th-century sources. While they discuss the contemporary historical situation of Scotland well, they offer no information at all about dialect verse, a tradition which after all Burns did not invent in that country. Beneath it all seems to be an almost impossible desire to define Burns as a "national" poet while avoiding anything that might wall him into an "ethnic" tradition.

Despite these Romantic overtones, Noble and Hogg want to position Burns as part of the radical Enlightenment. And the editors' resuscitation of this legacy restores a sense of excitement not only to Burns, but also to the entire period. It's hard not to relish the combative tone with which they hold up Byron's Jacobinism for comparison, even though it seems facile and perhaps wrong: "Was the mine-owning self-dramatizing aristocrat ever under the cosh in the way Burns was? Is individual nihilism of the Byron, Baudelaire variety the necessary prelude to utopian change?" (xci) Their editorial strategies are also innovative; I appreciate the bold decision to append their interpretations after each poem, rather than in the traditional hard-to-reach, tiny-font footnote, or in the old headnote that meekly pretends to "frame" the ensuing poem. These discussions helped to clarify some of the difficult poems, as well as offering something to contend with. All in all, this is among my favorite editions of a major poet, even though I might question some of its methods.

One of the reviewers below suggests the general level of critics of this book in apparently not knowing how to spell the name of the press.

The Canongate Burns has many typographical errors and should not be used as the only source one has of Burns's texts. It has, however, admirable notes outlining Burns's political writings of his last years. Several probable new works by Burns have been uncovered by the authors (and they are clearly labeled as works that appeared anonymously or under pseudonyms in newspapers).

In bringing Burns out of the shadows of "Holy Willie" self-righteousness and bardolatry, this edition is much to be commended. James Kinsley (The Oxford Standard authors) is to be preferred as your popular text of the poems, but if you want to know more and are truly interested in Burns and the political contexts in which he wrote, the Canongate Burns is an inimitable gloss on Burns as a person and on the ideas behind the poetry.

This is an excellent compilation of Burns' work, including many poems that were previously unpublished, unpublished in English language compilations or published under Burns' pseudonyms. The annotations, translations, and commentary are both helpful in understanding and interpreting this evocative and beautiful cornerstone of modern Scottish culture

This is an excellent compilation of Burns' work, including many poems that were previously unpublished, unpublished in English language compilations or published under Burns' pseudonyms. The annotations, translations, and commentary are both helpful in understanding and interpreting this evocative and beautiful cornerstone of modern Scottish culture

The Cannongate Burns has been thoroughly debunked as rubbish of the highest order by legitimate Burns scholars both in the US and Scotland. Three of the most predominate scholars of Burns who have disavowed not only the total lack of scholarship in the book but the obvious absolute disregard of research and validation of their facts by both Noble and Hogg are Ross Roy, Professor emeritus at The University of South Carolina and recognized as one of the world's most knowledgeable Burns scholars, Gerard Carruthers, member of the Association for Scottish Literary Studies (member of council); Scottish Catholic Historical Association; Newman Association (Chair of Glasgow Circle); and the Eighteenth Century Scottish Studies Society as well as a lecturing professor of English Studies at the University of Glasgow and Dr. James A. Mackay author of the 1992 Saltire Literary Award winning 'Burns' A biography of Robert Burns which is today recognized as the diffinative Burns biography of the 20th century and who is considered among world's foremost Burns Scholars. I am sorry that readers have been taken in by the trash called the Cannongate Burns but there it is. Shirley Kacmarik

There are of course many editions of Burns's poetry available, but sadly most mass-market editions seem more concerned with perpetuating some kind of twee, Brigadoony version of Burns and Scotland. Of the ostensibly scholarly paperback editions of Burns, however, I have not seen anything that comes close to Andrew Noble and Patrick Scott Hogg's for comprehensiveness, annotation, and context. Noble's introduction is brilliant and takes great care to rehabilitate Burns's image by taking him out of the hands of St. Andrew's Society sentimentality and resituating the poet in the political and social climate of his time. Burns was politically radical, sexually promiscuous, and intellectually engaged...all qualities that are effaced by the defanged, Burns supper bardie image that has been so popular with many Scots and Scottish-Americans alike. If you're seriously interested in Burns as a man and a poet, this is the edition you should own. If you want something to dust off once a year on January 25th (along with your kilt, sporran, and bagpipes), go buy one of the editions with the tartan cover.