Department of English Studies
Research
The James Hogg Society
Hosted by the Department of English Studies, University of Stirling
The James Hogg Society was founded in 1981 to encourage the study of the life and writings of James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd (1770-1835), and to bring together all those interested in him. The Society holds bi-annual conferences, bringing together international admirers of Hogg to reassess his work.
Hogg Society members at the Hogg monument,
by St Mary's Loch, Scotland. All photographs on the
Hogg Society website are courtesy of Ms. Jean Moffat, past Society Secretary
The Life of James Hogg
James Hogg (1770-1835), also known as 'The Ettrick Shepherd', lived and worked for most of his life in Ettrick Forest in the Scottish Borders. He is best known for his innovative novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824).
Seeing Robert Burns (1759-96) as a writer who gave expression to the experiences, insights, concerns, and traditions of the people of rural Scotland, Hogg set out to become Burns's successor in that role. Neither man was a naïve rustic, however. Although speaking for and from the people, both were in fruitful contact with the intellectual and literary life of the Scottish capital, Edinburgh, which during their lifetimes was one of the major cultural centres of Europe.
During a long career as a writer Hogg produced many poems, songs, periodical articles, plays, and novels. His books include Scottish Pastorals (1801), The Mountain Bard (1807), The Forest Minstrel (1810), The Queen's Wake (1813), The Hunting of Badlewe (1814), The Pilgrims of the Sun (1814), Mador of the Moor (1816), The Poetic Mirror (1816), Dramatic Tales (1817), The Brownie of Bodsbeck and Other Tales (1818), The Jacobite Relics of Scotland (1819), Winter Evening Tales (1820), The Jacobite Relics of Scotland Second Series (1821), The Three Perils of Man (1822), The Three Perils of Woman (1823), The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824), Queen Hynde (1824), The Shepherd's Calendar (1829), Songs by the Ettrick Shepherd (1831), A Queer Book (1832), Altrive Tales (1832), Lay Sermons (1834), Familiar Anecdotes of Sir Walter Scott (1834), and Tales of the Wars of Montrose (1835). In addition, Hogg founded and edited the periodical The Spy (1810-11), and was a frequent contributor to many other periodicals, including Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine and Fraser's Magazine.
Hogg is often associated with the Blackwood's 'Noctes Ambrosianae' circle, and especially with John Wilson. His admirers range from Byron to Andre Gide, and his influence on later Scottish writers has been immense, from Robert Louis Stevenson to Muriel Spark and beyond. Ballads from Hogg's family, and collected by the writer, appear in Walter Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, and Hogg's Familiar Anecdotes of Sir Walter Scott provides an insightful portrait of the enduring (if at times fraught) friendship between these two major authors.
For a concise account of Hogg's life, see the entry on him in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004).
Hogg's farmhouse at Altrive Lake (now called Eldinhope)
Plans for an extension to the house are held by the University of Stirling Library's
Special Collection in Scottish Literature, and can be viewed online here.
Meetings and Conferences of the Society
The Society holds social events from time to time: for example, on 28 June 1998, members met in Ettrick to commemorate the centenary of the completion of the Hogg birthplace monument, with a simple service in Ettrick Kirk and a celebratory visit to the monument, followed by evening entertainment at the Gordon Arms Inn in Yarrow.
The James Hogg Monument, at his birthplace, Ettrick Hall, Ettrick, the Ettrick Valley
Bi-Annual Conference
The Twelfth James Hogg Society Conference was held at The Mississippi University for Women in Spring 2006.
Hogg Society conferences offer a forum for the discussion of all aspects of Hogg and his world. Speakers are invited to offer their papers for consideration for publication in the Society's peer-reviewed journal, Studies in Hogg and his World.
Hugh McNaughtan Lecture
The James Hogg Society's Hugh McNaughtan Lectures are named after Hugh McNaughtan, who died in the summer of 2000. Hugh was a much-liked and much-respected member of the James Hogg Society whose presence graced and enlivened numerous Hogg Society conferences. Thanks to a munificent donation by Hugh's family, the James Hogg Society has been able to establish an annual Hugh McNaughtan lecture on a subject related to Hogg.
On 4 May 2005, the fifth such lecture was given by Professor Karl Miller (University of London), author of Electric Shepherd: A Likeness of James Hogg (2003).
On 10 May 2006, the sixth lecture was given by Professor David Hewitt (University of Aberdeen), editor-in-chief of the Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels.
Details of future lectures, as they become available, will be available from Gill Hughes on behalf of the James Hogg Society at gillhh@lineone.net; they will also be posted on this site.
Take a Walk in the Footsteps of the Justified Sinner
Alasdair Thanisch (University of St Andrews, Scotland) and Peter Thanisch (University of Tampere, Finland)
The title of James Hogg’s great novel, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, is a bit of a mouthful, so we abbreviate it to ’Justified Sinner’. Of course, you can enjoy Hogg’s novel without us imposing imagery on you, but maybe you’re interested in the sort of landscapes in which Hogg chose to locate the events in the novel. Hogg’s style is to mix fact and fiction and although he is deliberately ambiguous about people, dates and events, he is often very specific about geography, mostly using actual, rather than fictitious, place names. Where he does use a fictitious place name, he provides enough clues for us to be fairly sure where he had in mind. These web pages provide maps and photographs to show where these places are and what some of those landscapes look like now. Occasionally, we throw in an old print to give you an idea of what a place looked like at the time of the Justified Sinner, i.e. the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. We also provide directions and other useful information to help you plan some walks and other trips to explore the places we describe, since some of them are ‘off the beaten track’, yet well worth a visit. We urge you to get your hiking boots on and take a walk in the footsteps of the Justified Sinner. (PDF, 2.47MB)
Who's Who in the James Hogg Society
| Secretary | Deirdre Shepherd |
| General Editor | Dr Gillian Hughes |
| Chair | Dr Robin MacLachlan |
| Treasurer | Wendy Hunter |
| Web Contacts | Dr Suzanne Gilbert (content) suzanne.gilbert@stir.ac.uk |
| North American Committee | Dr Sharon Alker sharon.alker@utoronto.ca hnelson@sfu.ca |
Hogg Society members at the shoreline of Ross Priory,
Loch Lomond,
where the July 2000 conference banquet was held
James Hogg Society Publications
The first Newsletter of the James Hogg Society was published in May 1983 and appeared annually until
1989. Between 1984 and 1989 the Society also published Altrive Chapbooks: this reprinted one or more of Hogg's shorter and lesser-known poems or prose tales.
Studies in Hogg and his World is published annually. Each issue contains full-length articles, briefer notes, an edited Hogg text, and reviews of recent publications. An index and several sample articles are available.
Sample Table of Contents: Studies in Hogg and his World 11 (2000)
Occasional Publications
1. Papers Given at the first James Hogg Society Conference (Stirling, 1983), edited by Gillian Hughes (Stirling, 1984).
2. Papers given at the Second James Hogg Society Conference (Edinburgh 1985), edited by Gillian Hughes (Aberdeen: in association with the Association for Scottish Literary Studies, 1988).
3. Hogg's Prose: an Annotated Listing, compiled by Douglas S. Mack (Stirling,1985).
4. Hogg's Verse and Drama: A Chronological Listing, compiled by Gillian Hughes (Stirling, 1990).
Details of prices and availability can be obtained from the Treasurer, Wendy Hunter.
How to Join the James Hogg Society
Membership is open to anyone with an interest in James Hogg.
The annual subscription is £25 (£11.00 for retired people, students, etc).
Subscriptions, and requests for Society Publications, should be sent to:
Wendy Hunter
367 Bentley Road
Bentley
Doncaster
DN5 9TJ
w.a.hunter@sheffield.ac.uk
Membership is on a rolling basis and is renewable annually from 1st February, regardless of the month of first joining.
Payments for Society memberships and publications can be made via Paypal at the link below.
Downloadable Items:
-
Studies in Hogg and His World: Sample TOC (PDF, 39.3KB)
- Two Sample Articles from Studies in Hogg and His World:
Ian Duncan, 'Hogg's Body' (PDF, 68.6KB)
Penny Fielding, '"No Pole nor Pillar": Imagining the Arctic with James Hogg' (PDF, 78.2KB)
-
Interim Index of Hogg's Letters, ed. by Gillian Hughes (updated June 2006 to include vol. 2) (PDF, 135 KB)
- A Hogg tale (available in Altrive Chapbooks, ed. by Gillian Hughes):
'The Surpassing Adventures of Allan Gordon' (PDF, 208KB)
-
Alasdair Thanisch and Peter Thanisch, 'Take a Walk in the Footsteps of the Justified Sinner'(PDF, 2.47KB)
Select Bibliography
Collected Editions
The Stirling /South Carolina Research Edition of the Collected Works of James Hogg (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1995 -), now underway but not yet complete, is a modern scholarly edition. Previous editions which are useful but bowdlerised are Tales and Sketches by the Ettrick Shepherd, 6 vols (Glasgow: Blackie and Son, 1836-37), The Poetical Works of the Ettrick Shepherd, 5 vols (Glasgow: Blackie and Son, 1838-40), and The Works of the Ettrick Shepherd, ed. by Thomas Thomson, 2 vols (Glasgow: Blackie and Son, 1865).
Bibliography
Edith C. Batho's Bibliography in The Ettrick Shepherd (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1927), is still useful, together with her supplementary 'Notes on the Bibliography of James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd', in The Library, 16 (1935-36), 309-26. Two more modern and reader-friendly bibliographies are Douglas S. Mack, Hogg's Prose: An Annotated Listing (Stirling: The James Hogg Society, 1985), and Gillian Hughes, Hogg's Verse and Drama: A Chronological Listing (Stirling: The James Hogg Society, 1990). Subsequent information about recently-discovered Hogg items may be gleaned from various articles in The Bibliotheck and Studies in Hogg and his World.
Biography and Letters
A major recent study of Hogg's life and work is Karl Miller's Electric Shepherd (London:Faber, 2003). Gillian Hughes is currently writing what is likely to become the standard biography: her James Hogg: A Life will be published by Edinburgh University Press, who are also publishing her edition of Hogg's Letters (volume I published in 2004, to be completed in three volumes: a complete index will be included in volume III, but an interim index is available electronically. Hogg's life up to 1825 is covered by Alan Lang Strout's The Life and Letters of James Hogg, The Ettrick Shepherd Volume 1 (1770-1825), Texas Technological College Research Publications, 15 (Lubbock, Texas: Texas Technological College, 1946). Much valuable information may be obtained from Mrs M. G. Garden's memoir of her father, Memorials of James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd (London: Alexander Gardner, 1885), and from Mrs Norah Parr's account of Hogg's domestic life in James Hogg at Home (Dollar: Douglas S. Mack, 1980). Also useful are Sir George Douglas, James Hogg, Famous Scots Series (Edinburgh: Oliphant Anderson & Ferrier, 1899), and Henry Thew Stephenson's The Ettrick Shepherd: A Biography, Indiana University Studies, 54 (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University, 1922).
General Criticism
Edith C. Batho, The Ettrick Shepherd (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1927)
Louis Simpson, James Hogg: A Critical Study (Edinburgh and London: Oliver & Boyd, 1962)
Douglas Gifford, James Hogg (Edinburgh: The Ramsay Head Press, 1976)
Nelson C. Smith, James Hogg, Twayne's English Authors Series (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1980)
David Groves, James Hogg: The Growth of a Writer (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1988)
Thomas Crawford, 'James Hogg: The Play of Region and Nation', in The History of Scottish Literature: Volume 3 Nineteenth Century, ed. by Douglas Gifford (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1988), pp. 89-105
Silvia Mergenthal, James Hogg: Selbstbild und Bild, Publications of the Scottish Studies Centre of the Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz in Germersheim, 9 (Frankfurt-am-Main: Peter Lang, 1990)
Penny Fielding, Writing and Orality: Nationality, Culture, and Nineteenth-Century Scottish Fiction (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996)
Douglas S. Mack, 'Hogg in 2000 and Beyond', Romanticism on the Net, 19 (August 2000) [http://www.erudit.org/revue/ron/2000/v/n19/005934ar.html]
Karl Miller, Electric Shepherd (London: Faber, 2003)
