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  • Selected Essays on Robert Burns by G. Ross Roy
  • Corey E. Andrews
Selected Essays on Robert Burns. By G. Ross Roy. Edited by Patrick Scott, Elizabeth Sudduth, and Jo DuRant. Scottish Literature Series. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Libraries, 2018. ISBN 9781507523483. 226pp. pbk. £18.

This volume provides fifteen essays and interviews by G. Ross Roy, one of the most eminent and influential Burns scholars of the twentieth century. Roy (1924–2013) was a skilled editor and critic of Burns and his works, and his vast archive of Burns-related books and materials has a permanent home in the University of South Carolina's Irvin Collection of Rare Books and Special Collections. In addition to this remarkable archive–considered the best of its kind in North America–Roy established a research fellowship in honor of his grandfather, W. Ormiston Roy, who first introduced Ross to Burns and fostered his lifelong interest in the poet. Upon reading this volume, one gains a deep sense of Burns's importance as a leading figure of his day for both Scottish and world literature, in the past and the present.

The editors of this volume offer a wide range of Roy's writings over the span of fifty years of research. In these essays and interviews, Roy examines the nature of the poet's appeal to worldwide audiences, focusing on the poet's 'human' qualities that elevate him above his contemporaries and still manage to captivate readers of all types. The first selection, 'Encountering Robert Burns: An Oral History', recounts Roy's initial experience with Burns and his work; this originated in a lengthy visit to Scotland taken with his grandfather in 1932, when Roy was only eight years old. The influence of Roy's grandfather was profoundly nurturing and enduring; W. Ormiston Roy, described as 'a landscape gardener, horticulturist, and book collector' (p. 3), made sure his grandson inherited the collection that would be the heart of Roy's own Burns archive. In addition to written materials, Roy's grandfather also 'purchased Burns's wooden porridge bowl' (p. 3), which resides in the Roy Collection. As Roy attended college, he lived with his grandfather and noted that 'one could not be with Willie without some of his infectious enthusiasm rubbing off, and before long I became interested in Robert Burns' (p. 4). He also remarks, 'two-thirds of a century have elapsed but the interest has not waned' (p. 4).

It is difficult not to share Roy's infectious enthusiasm while reading this volume, for his thorough knowledge of Burns and his writings derived from his extensive reading of multiple texts, biographies, and criticism of [End Page 123] the poet, as well as his editing of manuscripts of letters, poems, and songs. The introductory essay, 'Robert Burns: A Self-Portrait', is based on Roy's editing of Burns's letters; as Roy observes, 'more than most authors we come to know Burns through the letters he wrote and received' (p. 12). This essay should be essential reading for students and critics of Burns, for it demonstrates the limited extent of our knowledge of the poet based on his surviving letters; Roy estimates that 'we account for about 750 letters, but I feel quite certain that 50 per cent or so of those he wrote either have not survived, or have not come to light' (p. 19). Since 1975, when Roy wrote this essay, another fifty letters have been added to Burns's total correspondence, although not all in the collection are trustworthy. Of these, those letters no longer surviving in manuscript are 'suspect both for what early editors have, through the use of ellipsis, shown to be omitted, and what they have silently added' (pp. 17–18). This process of editorial emendation is shown by Roy to be part of a larger pattern of distortion, wherein Burns and his legacy become appropriated in support of often wildly divergent causes. In essays on Burns's relationship to the Scottish Kirk and the French Revolution, Roy disabuses such tendencies on the part of the poet's advocates and detractors, particularly when 'Burns has been made to prove whatever the writer wanted him...

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