The Spy: A Periodical Paper of Literary Amusement and Instruction

Hogg’s extremely rare periodical of 1810-11 shows him reacting to the writers, personalities and locales of Scotland’s capital city after his move to Edinburgh from Ettrick and his career change from shepherd and farmer to professional author. His characteristically astute and idiosyncratic vision reveals a rather different city from that of Walter Scott and Francis Jeffrey, and his band of contributors from another audience for his work than the middle class Tories associated with the later Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine . This book includes early versions of some of Hogg’s best-known poetry and prose besides a wealth of fascinating lesser-known material. This is the first edition since the original of 1810-11 was published, and offers a carefully constructed text, full of annotation, notes on Hogg’s contributors to his paper, and a history of its making. It represents an advance in our knowledge both of Hogg’s early writing career and of the city he encountered early in the 19th century.