In a broad-ranging series of essays this book, published in the 250th anniversary year of his birth, offers a timely opportunity to re-examine the relationships between Robert Burns and writers of literature in the north of Ireland. Contents: Andrew R. Holmes (QUB), Presbyterian religion, poetry, and politics in Ulster, 1770-1850; Frank Ferguson (UU), ‘Burns the Conservative’: revising the Lowland Scottish tradition in Ulster poetry; Carol Baraniuk (U Glasgow), The independence of the Ulster-Scots poetic tradition; Jennifer Orr (U Glasgow), Samuel Thomson and the poetics of Ulster Scots identity; John Erskine (Stranmillis College), Robert Burns and Ulster, 1786-c. 1830; Frank Ferguson, John Erskine & Roger Dixon, Collecting Burns in the north of Ireland, 1844-1902; Norman Vance (U Sussex), Northern fiction after Carleton; Colin Walker (QUB), Presbyterianism in Irish fiction, 1780-1920.