Amazing discovery unlocks Scots writer's past

Published on Monday 29 August 2005 11:27

I WILL never forget one particular autumn afternoon at New York University's Fales Library, where I had gone to see a handful of letters and short literary manuscripts by James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd (1770-1835). A pencil note on one of the two, slim folders mentioned Hogg's Border romance, The Three Perils of Man, with the cryptic reference "See bottom shelf".

Mike Kelly, the library's assistant curator, began an investigation at my request and just at closing time produced a dusty box crammed full of sheets of paper all written over in Hogg's clear and distinctive handwriting - a manuscript of a large part of the novel in the writer's own hand.

I reeled out incredulously into the busy traffic of Washington Square, knowing that I had experienced a rare moment in a scholar's life and one that would change our understanding of that particular Hogg work immeasurably.

It has been known for many years, for instance, that Hogg's Border chieftain had originally been Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch, but that Hogg had changed the name to Sir Ringan Redhough under pressure from Sir Walter Scott of Abbotsford, and the earliest section of this manuscript does indeed refer to "Sir Walter Scott", while later sections represent the revised version of the novel. Examining Hogg's numerous deletions and second thoughts in this manuscript gave me a fresh and very real sense of closeness to him as a professional author.

My visit to New York was research for the new Stirling/South Carolina Research Edition of the Collected Works of James Hogg. If you have been browsing recently in the Scottish literature section of your local bookshop you may have noticed an increasing number of pale blue paperbacks with 19th-century paintings on the front covers, published by Edinburgh University Press.

His writings, buried for more than a century and a half in scattered periodicals, song-sheets, hand-written manuscripts, and rare first editions are now coming into the public domain at modest prices. Sixteen volumes of the new edition have now been published in hardback, and eight paperbacks have followed.

Unearthing the treasures of this literary Pompei from the rubble of neglect and indifference is hard but exciting and even revolutionary work, since it is changing our views of one of Scotland's major writers rapidly and forever.Collecting and editing Hogg's letters has been particularly enjoyable and demanding. As part of the process of surveying and editing Hogg’s surviving letters I have written to libraries round the world on speculation - the curator of the Pushkin Museum in Russia was politely puzzled by my request. On one occasion I enjoyed the adrenalin-filled experience of making a telephone bid at a country auction for a letter on behalf of the University of Stirling library. (I've always yearned to be the mysterious bidder on the other end of the line.)

Together Hogg's surviving letters give a new shape to his life, a less considered account than his published autobiography, and one which is full of surprises: Hogg's intense interest in the theatre is just one example. His letters are finely attuned to individual correspondents - witty and entertaining, whether they are joyous or angry, the surviving traces of a powerful and still-living voice.Pleasure and anxiety go hand-in-hand as a volume is researched and produced. What will come to light next? A notebook of songs collected by Hogg for the second volume of his Jacobite Relics of Scotland, and a fragment of his original notes to the work were identified in the Alexander Turnbull Library in New Zealand, for instance, just before the printing and publication of the new Hogg Edition volume was begun. The number of Hogg's songs is still an unknown factor and researchers dredge for fresh ones in catalogues and lists that tend to classify songs by the name of the composer rather than the writer of the lyrics. Newspapers and long-forgotten periodicals have turned out to contain poems and short stories not previously listed, and manuscripts have been located among the treasures of private individuals or among items to be sold at auction.

Even wandering around art galleries looking out for suitable cover paintings for the paperback volumes, has been illuminating. The Shepherd's Calendar paperback features Hogg contemporary Alexander Carse's marvellous Shepherd in a Snowstorm, the visual realism of a self-taught painter balancing the realism in prose of a self-taught writer. Their vision of the hard reality of the shepherd's life is so similar, so far removed from the conventionally pastoral, that it is natural to wonder if they were personally acquainted.

Getting to know James Hogg is a perpetual voyage of discovery.

Gillian Hughes is James Hogg Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB) Research Fellow of the University of Stirling, and joint General Editor of the Stirling/South Carolina Edition of James Hogg. She is a founder member of the James Hogg Society and editor of the journal Studies in Hogg and His World.

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