Robert Burns’s ‘WR’ – The Writing-Master Revealed

In preparing his poems for the press in 1786, Burns was advised by someone who annotated the poet’s commonplace book under the initials ‘WR.’ This mystery was brought up again by Professor Nigel Leask when editing the first volume of the New Oxford Works of Burns. In response, Professor Patrick Scott suggested a new candidate based on an anecdote contained in a Victorian edition of Burns, This paper points out the inconsistencies in that identification and posits that WR was William Robinson, a retired writing-master and kirk precentor in Ayr, who knew Burns and his family and as such had the literary and musical skills with the personal acquaintanceship required to be Burns’s first editor.