The Three Perils of Man

One of Hogg's longest and also one of his most original and daring works, presented here in a scholarly edition in light of the discovery of the original manuscript.

The Collected Works of James Hogg

Founding General Editor: Douglas S. Mack

General Editors: Ian Duncan and Suzanne Gilbert

`Simple congratulations are in order at the outset, to the editors and publisher [...] of the projected Collected Works of James Hogg. It has taken a long time for Hogg to be recognised as one of the most notable Scottish writers, and it can fairly be said that the process of getting him into full and clear focus is still far from complete. That process is immeasurably helped by the provision of proper and unbowdlerised texts (in many cases for the first time), and in this the ongoing Collected Works will be a milestone [...] we have an author of unique interest, force, and originality.''---Edwin Morgan, Scottish Literary Journal

`Edinburgh University Press are also to be praised for the elegant presentation of the books. It is wonderful that at last we are going to have a collected edition of this important author without bowdlerisation or linguistic interference [...]. These books of Hogg have been wonderfully presented and edited. Hogg''s own idiosyncratic style has been left untouched.''---Ian Crichton Smith, Studies in Scottish Literature

`It may take some time, but when the current Collected Works reaches its culmination, Hogg''s great novel should seem a little less oddly unique, and some other astounding books [...] may receive their share of belated glory.''---Liam Mcllvanney, London Review of Books

`[T]he Stirling/South Carolina edition of Hogg''s works is proving one of the major scholarly publishing events of the decade.''---Penny Fielding, Studies in Hogg and his World

`A quiet revolution in Scottish literary studies has been going on over the past 10 years. The Stirling/South Carolina research edition of the collected works of James Hogg has been steadily forcing a reassessment of one of our best-known but least-read authors.''---James Robertson, The Herald

The Stirling/South Carolina Research Edition of The Collected Works of James Hogg

The Three Perils of Man

Edited by Judy King and Graham Tulloch with an essay on the manuscript by Gillian Hughes

In starting The Three Perils of Man Hogg embarked on an ambitious project of emulating and perhaps surpassing his friend and rival Walter Scott in Scott''s own chosen literary territory, chivalry and the Borders. Originally envisaged as a two volume `Border Romance'', entitled The Perilous Castle and centred around Roxburgh Castle, it expanded to include events at Aikwood, another castle and home of the legendary wizard Michael Scott, leading eventually to the adoption of the title The Three Perils of Man: War, Women, and Witchcraft. Hogg offers a devastating critique of chivalry and combines it with a study of the supernatural, an area in which he had been steeped from his childhood, and which produces some of his finest writing, including a magnificent portrait of the Devil disguised as an abbot. A host of other characters led by the lovable Charlie Scott of Yardbire provide us with a vision of everyday Borders life and values to set against the more fantastic worlds of chivalry and wizardry. Included in the novel is a story-telling contest which features some of Hogg''s most powerful short stories.

This edition is based on the first edition of 1822 but draws on the newly available manuscript in the Fales Library of New York University to provide a number of new readings, including the restoration of Hogg''s original audacious choice of the name Sir Walter Scott for a key character. It includes an introduction describing the genesis, composition, publication and subsequent revision of the novel, a historical and geographical note, full explanatory notes and a glossary. It also contains a comprehensive essay on the manuscript by Gillian Hughes.

The Stirling/South Carolina Research Edition of The Collected Works of James Hogg

Founding General Editor: Douglas S. Mack

General Editors: Ian Duncan and Suzanne Gilbert

From reviews of previous volumes:

`Chastity, carnality, carnage and carnivorousness are among his favourite subjects, and dance together in his writings to the music of a divided life. [...] The later eighteenth century was a time when [Scotland] had taken to producing writers and thinkers of world consequence. One of these - though long disregarded as such, long unimaginable as such - was Hogg.''---Karl Miller, Times Literary Supplement

`[The new] collected edition [...] will eventually run to some thirty volumes. The first three came out last year [in 1995], and are magnificent: spaciously designed, scrupulously edited and thoughtfully introduced, with Antony Hasler''s Introduction to The Three Perils of Woman especially illuminating. The two volumes published along with The Three Perils of Woman are much less disturbing than that book but immensely engaging. The Shepherd''s Calendar is a volume of anecdotes and sketches of rural life in the Borders [...]. A Queer Book is a volume of poems. [...] There is a strangeness about some of these poems that recalls the self-consciousness of Hogg''s best fiction.''---John Barrell, The London Review of Books

`Unlike other volumes in the Stirling/South Carolina Edition, the Lay Sermons are textually very simple [...]. This is a welcome addition to the series, essential to its completeness. Even here, some of Hogg''s characteristic narrative complexities surface, however. [...] It is a little hard to know what to do with such apparently wanton and provocative narratorial disturbance, the more so as it does not seem to issue in corresponding equivocation in the body of the Sermons themselves. The editor [Gillian Hughes], wisely it seems to me, refrains from attempting a resolution of the inconsistency at this point; it is a notable example of the restraint and good judgment which characterizes her work, a measuredness that keeps it well clear of the strain of over-ingenious interpretation which has accompanied Hogg''s just re-positioning at the centre of nineteenth-century Scottish literary-critical scrutiny over the past few years.''---Susan Manning, Eighteenth-Century Scotland