James Robertson's Poems of Allan Ramsay (1802) and the Adaptation of Other Scottish Booksellers' Book Illustrations of the Works of Ramsay

Offering the first ever book-historical account of the 1802 two-volume edition of Poems of Allan Ramsay published by the Edinburgh printer, James Robertson, the essay embeds the edition within a discussion of Robertson's exploitation of the five illustrated editions of Ramsay's works that had been published in Scotland between 1780 and 1798. It examines how it was possible for Robertson to retail his volumes at the low price of 5 s., in the process shedding light on the printer's opportunistic cashing in — at a time when earlier editions issued by the Morisons of Perth were no longer available — on market demand for an affordable edition of Ramsay's poems. The essay also focuses on the choice and revision of the nine illustrations the printer lifted from the earlier Scottish editions and adapted for the marketing-specific and interpretive purposes of his edition.