Selected Essays on Robert Burns by G. Ross Roy

This book collects essays and talks about Robert Burns by the Burns scholar G. Ross Roy (1924-2013). Along with introductions to such well-known Burns poems as "Tam o' Shanter" and "Auld Lang Syne," it includes essays discussing Burns's attitudes to the French Revolution, politics, and religion, his love-letters to Clarinda, The Merry Muses of Caledonia, poems written about Burns, and the editing of Burns's works.

The volume opens with some autobiographical reflections about reading and working on Burns that Ross Roy recorded shortly before his death, and it concludes with an illustrated interview about his six decades as a Burns collector and some of the treasures in the G. Ross Roy Collection, at the University of South Carolina.

G. Ross Roy (1924-2013) was Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Emeritus, at the University of South Carolina, and founding editor of the journal Studies in Scottish Literature. Among Burnsians he is best known for his two-volume edition of The Letters of Robert Burns (1985). He was an honorary president of the Robert Burns World Federation, honorary fellow of the Association for Scottish Literary Studies, and honorary professor at the University of Glasgow. His contributions to Scottish studies were recognized by honorary doctorates from the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow.

The volume, originally planned with the cooperation of Professor Roy himself, has been edited by Patrick Scott, Elizabeth Sudduth, and Jo DuRant. A print-on-demand paperback version is also available.