Judy King and Graham Tulloch, eds., James Hogg, The Three Perils of Man; or, War, Women, and Witchcraft, A Border Romance and Thomas C. Richardson, ed., James Hogg, Contributions to Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 2: 1829-1835

Citation

McKeever GL (2013) Judy King and Graham Tulloch, eds., James Hogg, The Three Perils of Man; or, War, Women, and Witchcraft, A Border Romance and Thomas C. Richardson, ed., James Hogg, Contributions to Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 2: 1829-1835. Review of: Judy King and Graham Tulloch, eds., James Hogg, The Three Perils of Man; or, War, Women, and Witchcraft, A Border Romance. Edinburgh University Press, 2012. Pp. 558. £80. ISBN 9780748638116 and Thomas C. Richardson, ed., James Hogg, Contributions to Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 2: 1829-1835. Edinburgh University Press, 2012. Pp. 509. ISBN 9780748624898.. BARS Review, (43). https://www.bars.ac.uk/review/index.php/barsreview/article/view/26

Abstract
‘A great number of people now-a-days are beginning broadly to insinuate that there are no such things as ghosts, or spiritual beings visible to mortal sight. Even Sir Walter Scott is turned renegade, and, with his stories made up of half-and-half, like Nathaniel Gow’s toddy, is trying to throw cold water on the most certain, though most impalpable, phenomena of human nature. The bodies are daft. Heaven mend their wits!’ With this assertion opens Hogg’s short story ‘The Mysterious Bride’, laying out the terms of a contest that surfaces again and again in his writing. In the two latest volumes to appear in the Stirling/South Carolina Research Edition of his works, such questions remain consistently to the fore, reflecting Hogg’s long-term interest in the supernatural tradition and what place, if any, it could claim in the developing literary culture of early nineteenth-century Scotland. Blending contemporary intellectual debate with traditionary material, these publications reaffirm Hogg’s distinctive approach to the epistemological challenges presented at the outset of modernity – with his brand of irreverent humour both welcome and ever-present. The ongoing re-evaluation of Hogg’s work continues to influence the shifting paradigm of Romanticism. In many ways a figure that challenges orthodoxy, the working-class, nonmetropolitan sensibilities of his varied writings are part of what continues to win him the audience he lacked for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The excellent work behind these scholarly editions has been pivotal in driving this reappraisal, with the two latest releases continuing the high editorial standards those familiar with the series have come to expect.

Keywords
Judy King; Graham Tulloch; James Hogg; Three Perils of Man; Fiction; Romantic; Thomas C. Richardson; Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine; Periodicals

Journal
BARS Review, Issue 43