Selected Bibliography:
Robert Fergusson (1750-1774)

By Alan T. McKenzie,
Purdue University

Last revised 21 February 2001

Bibliographies

• John A. Fairley, A Bibliography of Robert Fergusson (Glasgow: Maclehose, 1915).
• Gordon Lindstrand, "Fairley's Checklist of Robert Fergusson: Corrections and a Problem in Analytical Bibliography," Studies in Scottish Literature 7 (1970): 159-67.
• Tom Scott, "Robert Fergusson: A Bibliographical Review to 1966," Scotia Review 7 (1974): 5-18.
• Matthew A. McDiarmid, "Bibliography of Works Consulted," in vol. 1 of his edition, The Poems of Robert Fergusson, pp. xv-xxiii.

Editions

• Collected Works

  • The Poems of Robert Fergusson, ed. Matthew P. McDiarmid, 2 vols. The Scottish Text Society, ser. 3, vols. 21 and 24 (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1954-56).
  • The Unpublished Poems of Robert Fergusson, ed. William E. Gillis (Edinburgh: McDonald, 1955).
  • Poems by Allan Ramsay and Robert Fergusson, ed. Alexander M. Kinghorn and Alexander Law, The Association for Scottish Literary Studies, no. 4 (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1974).
  
  

• Early Editions

  • Poems by Robert Fergusson (Edinburgh: Ruddiman, 1773).
  • Poems on Various Subjects, by Robert Fergusson: Part II (Edinburgh: Ruddiman, 1779).
  • The Poetical Works of Robert Fergusson: With the Life of the Author, ed. David Irving (Glasgow: Chapman and Lang, 1800).
  • The Works of Robert Fergusson: To which Is Prefixed, a Sketch of the Author's Life [by Alexander Peterkin] (London: Oddy, 1807).
  
  

• Miscellaneous

  • Anne Smith, "A Vision of Angels" [a play, set in the Schelles], in Fergusson: A Bi-Centenary Handsel, ed. Robert Garioch and Ann Smith (Edinburgh: Reprographia, 1974), pp. 55-72.
  
  

Archives and Depositories

• Fergusson destroyed his papers just before he died. There are inscribed copies of his 1773 Poems and some scraps among the Cape Records, MSS 2041-2044, in the National Library of Scotland, and a few manuscripts in the Laing Collection at the Edinburgh University Library. The Edinburgh Room of the Edinburgh Central Public Library maintains a folder of newspaper clippings about him.

Biographies

• Matthew P. McDiarmid, "The Poet's Life," in vol. 1 of his edition, The Poems of Robert Fergusson, pp. 1-117.
• David Irving, The Life of Robert Fergusson (Glasgow: Chapman & Lang, 1799).
• Thomas Sommers, The Life of Robert Fergusson, the Scottish Poet (Edinburgh: Stewart, 1803).
• William Gillis, "An Authentic Fergusson Portrait," Studies in Scottish Literature 1 (1964): 215-22.
• [According to the 1974 Tom Scott bibliography, there is a fine, but unpublished and non-circulating, biography by William E. Gillis in the Edinburgh University Library, written c. 1955.]

Criticism

• Collections

  • Sydney Goodsir Smith, ed., Robert Fergusson, 1750-1774: Essays by Various Hands to Commemorate the Bicentenary of his Birth (Edinburgh: Nelson, 1952).
  
  

• General

  • James Connor, "Burns's Elder Brother in the Muse," Studies in Scottish Literature 8 (1998): 59-66.
  • Kenneth Simpson, "Poetic Genre and National Identity: Ramsay, Fergusson and Burns," Studies in Scottish Literature 30 (1998): 31-42.
  • Patrick Menneteau, "Robert Fergusson's Contribution to the Definition of a Scottish Cultural Identity," Études Écossaises, Special Issue: Proceedings of the Scottish Workshop of the ESSE Conference, 1993 (1994): 39-58.
  • Alan T. McKenzie, "Robert Fergusson," in Dictionary of Literary Biography: Eighteenth-Century British Poets, Second Series, ed. John Sitter, vol. 109 (Detroit: Bruccoli Clark Layman, 1991), pp. 137-48.
  • F. W. Freeman, Robert Fergusson and the Scots Humanist Compromise (Edinburgh: University Press, 1984).
  • John MacQueen, "Unenlightened and Early Darkened: Alexander Ross and Robert Fergusson," in The Enlightenment and Scottish Literature, Volume One: Progress and Poetry (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1982), pp. 117-31.
  • David Daiches, Robert Fergusson, Scottish Writers Series (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1982).
  • Charles Smith, "A Short Day on The Peak of Fame: The Achievement and Tragedy of Robert Fergusson," Scots Magazine n.s. 102-1 (Oct. 1974): 63-72.
  • Hugh G. Mackay, "Robert Fergusson's Scots Poetry," Library Review 23 (1971-72), 92-95.
  • Allan H. MacLaine, Robert Fergusson (New York: Twayne, 1965).
  • Matthew P. McDiarmid, "A Study of the Poetry of Robert Fergusson," in vol. 1 of his edition, The Poems of Robert Fergusson, pp. 118-98.
  • James A. Roy, "Robert Fergusson and Eighteenth-Century Scotland," University of Toronto Quarterly 17 (Jan. 1948): 179-89.
  • John Speirs, "Robert Fergusson," in The Scots Literary Tradition: An Essay in Criticism (London: Chatto & Windus, 1940), pp. 114-23.
  • John W. Oliver, "Fergusson the Writer Chiel," in Essays in Literature, ed. John Murray (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1936), pp. 1-25.
  • William Roughead, "A Note on Robert Fergusson," The Juridical Review 30 (1918): 99-126, 194-226.
  
  

• Other

  • Alan Taylor, "Scotland's Forgotten Laureate," New Statesman 129 (Jan. 2000): 36-37.
  • Robert Crawford, "Robert Fergusson's Robert Burns," in Robert Burns and Cultural Authority (Iowa City: Univ. of Iowa Press, 1999), pp. 1-22.
  • Christopher Whyte, "Bakhtin at Christ's Kirk: Part II, Carnival and the Vernacular Revival," Studies in Scottish Literature 29 (1996): 133-57.
  • Richard B. Sher, "Images of Glasgow in Late Eighteenth-Century Popular Poetry," in Andrew Hook and Richard B. Sher, eds., The Glasgow Enlightenment (East Linton, East Lothian: Tuckwell Press, in association with the Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society, 1995), pp. 190-213.
  • Patrick Menneteau, "Robert Fergusson's Contribution to the Definition of a Scottish Cultural Identity," Scottish Studies/Études Écossaises, Special Issue: Proceedings of the Scottish Workshop of the E.S.S.E. Conference, Bordeaux, 1993 (1994): 39-58.
  • A. M. Kinghorn, "Watson's Choice, Ramsay's Voice and a Flash of Fergusson, " Scottish Literary Journal 19, no. 2 (1992): 5-23.
  • F. W. Freeman, "Robert Fergusson: Pastoral and Politics at Mid-Century," in Andrew Hook, ed., The History of Scottish Literature, II: 1660-1800 (Aberdeen: Aberdeen Univ. Press, 1987), pp. 141-56.
  • Edwina Burness, "The Influence of Burns and Fergusson on the War Poetry of Robert Service," Studies in Scottish Literature 21 (1986): 135-46.
  • Alan T. McKenzie, "Two 'Heads Weel Pang'd Wi' Lear': Robert Fergusson, Samuel Johnson, and St. Andrews," Scottish Literary Journal 11 (Dec. 1984): 25-35.
  • Jerry O'Brien, "The Sonsie Muse: The Satiric Use of Neoclassical Diction in the Poems of Robert Fergusson," Studies in Scottish Literature 19 (1984): 165-76.
  • Thomas Crawford, "The Vernacular Revival and the Poetic Thrill: A Hedonist Approach," in Scotland and the Lowland Tongue: Studies in the Language and Literature of Lowland Scotland in Honour of David D. Murison, ed. J. Derrick McClure (Aberdeen: Aberdeen Univ. Press, 1983), pp. 79-99.
  • William Walling, "More than Sufficient Room: Sir David Wilkie and the Scottish Literary Tradition," in Karl Kroeber and William Walling, eds., Images of Romanticism: Verbal and Visual Affinities (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1978), pp. 107-31.
  • Allan H. MacLaine, "The Christis Kirk Tradition: Its Evolution in Scots Poetry to Burns, Part III, The Early Eighteenth Century: Allan Ramsay and His Followers," Studies in Scottish Literature 2 (1965): 163-82.
  • Allan H. MacLaine, "Robert Fergusson's Auld Reikie and the Poetry of City Life," Studies in Scottish Literature 1 (1963): 99-110.
  • David Daiches, "Eighteenth-Century Vernacular Poetry," in Scottish Poetry: A Critical Survey, ed. James Kinsley (London: Cassell, 1955), pp. 150-84.
  • James A. Roy, "The Edinburgh of Robert Fergusson," Queen's Quarterly 31 (1925): 225-44.

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