The Scottish poet Robert Burns has been idolised and eulogised. He has been sainted, painted, tarted up and toasted. He is famous as the author of 'Auld Lang Syne', and he has long since become the patron saint of the heart-sore and the hung-over. But what about the poems? Beneath the cult of Burns' Nights and patriotic yawps, there is the work itself, among the purest and most truthful created in any age. This is a Burns collection like no other: a reader's edition, made for the pleasure of reading. Novelist and Scottish essayist Andrew O'Hagan comes into company with the poet who has mattered most to him in his writing life. He selects the poems for the reader, and converses with the work, offering fragments and distilled commentary of his own. The effect is explosive, giving us Robert Burns at his very best - a political Burns, a poet who can name hypocrisy and intolerance, and point directly to the human heart.
The educated son of a poor cotter, Burns became known for his rustic background, his fraternity with the working man, his Jacobite loyalty and his amorous entanglements. Yet his contribution to literature is immense. His use of dialogue and colloquial speech is comparable to that of Chaucer and Byron, but is also uniquely his own. He liberated the language, allowing freedom to the Romantic movement, and his use of old folk tunes enormously enhanced the Scottish musical tradition.
Robert Burns (1759-96) was born into a farming family in Ayrshire, Scotland. The publication in 1786 of his first book, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish dialect, made him famous overnight, and saw him feted by Edinburgh society. But Burns made no money from his writing and quickly fell on hard times, returning to farming in Dumfries and, when that failed, to work as an excise officer. He devoted his final years to poetry and the writing of Scottish songs.
This selection gives equal weight to the two aspects of Robert Burns's reputation, as a lyricist and as a much-loved Scottish poet. Placing works in probable order of composition, it includes lyrics to his most well known songs, such as the nostalgic Auld Lang Syne, the romantic A Red, Red Rose, and the patriotic Scots What Hae. As a poet, Burns wrote with deceptive simplicity and imaginative sympathy, and demonstrated enormous range - from comic dramatic monologues such as Holy Willie's Prayer, which mocks hypocrisy, to narratives including the celebrated Tam O' Shanter, about the ghostly visions of a drunk.
In the quaint Scottish countryside, Robert Burns, the beloved poet, pens a poignant tale of love, loss, and the enduring power of the human spirit. "The Joyful Widower" follows the journey of a man grappling with the sudden death of his beloved wife. As he navigates the depths of grief, he finds solace in the memories they shared and the unwavering support of his community. Through laughter and tears, Burns explores the complexities of human emotion and the transformative nature of loss.
Robert Burns is more than Scotland's national poet. With Shakespeare, Burns is an icon for the UK and Scotland he is a national symbol. This volume of poems and songs is a best selling, beautiful edi
