James Hogg: Contributions to English, Irish, and American Periodicals ed. by Adrian Hunter (review)

James Hogg's Contributions to English, Irish, and American Periodicals, ed. by Adrian Hunter, with Barbara Leonardi (EUP, 2020), the 30th volume in the Stirling/South Carolina Research Edition of the Collected Works of James Hogg (1995-present) (henceforth, S/SC), is the much-anticipated culmination of the AHRC-funded project, 'James Hogg: Contributions to International Periodicals' (2014–2018). Attendees of the James Hogg Society conferences and fellow S/SC editors have enjoyed hearing about Dr Adrian Hunter and Dr Barbara Leonardi's painstaking work tracing Hogg's presence in international periodicals. The resulting volume, before us now, is relatively slim compared to other compilation volumes in the S/SC edition. Twenty-six original texts were identified as appearing in periodicals outwith Scotland (not including Hogg's contributions to the London-based periodical, Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country, which will be published in a separate S/SC volume, edited by the present author). The volume includes texts published in such diverse locals as London, Belfast, Dublin, Boston, Albany, and New York, arranged chronologically according to date of publication. Of equal interest is Hunter and Leonardi's work tracing reprints of Hogg's works beyond the British Isles, which is meticulously documented in the Appendix, 'Reprintings of Hogg's Works Overseas. Compiled by Barbara Leonardi'. Here we get a better impression of the true international reach of Hogg's work through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with reprints appearing not only in North America, but also as far afield as East India, Bermuda, Grenada, Australia, and New Zealand. As such, this volume will be of interest, not only to scholars of Scottish Romanticism and the Romantic-era periodical press, but also to scholars and students interested in the international reach and reception of Scottish writers through the long nineteenth century.

Providing the wider contextual framing for such a volume is no mean feat. Hunter's introduction provides a contextual and critical framework for approaching a diverse group of original texts (including tales, poems, songs, and essays), published across Hogg's lifetime and just beyond, in a range of national and local contexts. The organising principle for the introduction is the 'central issue of authorial personality' (xii) through the course of Hogg's writing lifetime, and his attempts to market upon, control, and supersede, the 'Ettrick Shepherd' persona, first developed in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. Anyone addressing the seminal role of the periodical press in Hogg's career must attend to Blackwood's; however, this organising principle does necessitate the covering of some rather familiar ground in Hogg scholarship (alongside some intriguing additions to the story, such as the publication of his '"Chaldee" reprise' (xix) 'John Paterson's Mare' in the Newcastle Magazine, which, Hunter argues, treated Hogg more favourably as a labouring-class writer than Blackwood's). The introduction becomes more excitingly original when we come to the 'post-Blackwood's period' (p. xiii). After a falling out with William Blackwood, Hogg travelled to London in December 1831, where he developed his relationships with James Fraser of Fraser's Magazine, George Glenny of the Royal Lady's Magazine, and James Cochrane of the Metropolitan Magazine and the Monthly Magazine. Hunter particularly attends to Hogg's writings for the Royal Lady's Magazine and the Metropolitan Magazine arguing that in these magazines 'we find Hogg vying between retrospection and reinvention, looking back to the origins of the 'Ettrick Shepherd' in pastoral and the ballad while responding to the creative possibilities of the new and diverse metropolitan audiences for whom he was now writing' (xxi). His reading of how Hogg addresses the female readership of the Royal Lady's Magazine is notably detailed and convincing, with Hogg here not only pleasing and flattering the ladies, but also testing 'the magazine's boundaries of sexual permissiveness' (xxiii). In the Metropolitan, according to Hunter, we find Hogg working against his typical circumscription to the rural and...