Inspirational Quotes by James Hogg (Scottish poet)

James Hogg (1770–1835,) often known as The Ettrick Shepherd, was a Scottish minor poet and novelist from the Romantic era. Largely self-educated, he was also a short-story writer, journalist, and collector of authentic Scottish folklore. In his time, he was primarily recognized and admired by his contemporaries as a poet of considerable distinction.

Born on Ettrickhall Farm in Ettrick, Selkirkshire, Hogg spent most of his youth and early adulthood as a shepherd and a farmhand in the Ettrick Forest and was almost totally self-educated. His talent was discovered early by the novelist Sir Walter Scott, to whom he supplied songs for Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. With Scott’s backing, he wrote a successful collection of ballads, The Mountain Bard (1807.)

Hogg went in 1810 to Edinburgh, where he made friends with Lord Byron, Robert Southey, and William Wordsworth. He was a noteworthy contributor to Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine in its early years.

Hogg made his reputation as a poet with The Queen’s Wake (1813,) a book of poems the celebration of the arrival of Mary Stuart as Queen in Edinburgh. Of Hogg’s prolific poetic output, only a few narrative poems and ballads included in the Wake are of lasting value. His “Kilmeny” and “The Witch of Fife” enjoyed a trend during the ballad revival that accompanied the Romantic Movement.

Hogg’s most famous work is the novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824,) a macabre tale of a psychopath that anticipates the modern psychological thriller. He also wrote the novels The Three Perils of Man (1822,) The Three Perils of Woman (1823.) His other works include The Domestic Manners and Private Life of Sir Walter Scott (1834,) Tales of the War of Montrose (1835,) and an edition of Robert Burns (1834–35.)

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