"Hogg left a written record of three of his many journeys to the Highlands, those of 1802, 1803 and 1804, and in Highland Journeys he offers a thoughtful and deeply-felt response to the Highland Clearances. He gives vivid pictures of his experiences, including a narrow escape from a Navy press-gang, and a Sacrament day with one minister preaching in English and another in Gaelic. Hogg also explains aspects of Gaelic culture such as the waulking songs, and he describes the trade in kelp, lucrative to the landowners but back-breaking and ill-paid for the workers. Highland Journeys makes a refreshing contribution to our understanding of early nineteenth-century travel writing"--Publisher description.

Responding to the resurgence of interest in the Scottish working-class writer James Hogg, Sharon Alker and Holly Faith Nelson offer the first edited collection devoted to an examination of the critical implications of his writings and their position in the Edinburgh and London literary marketplaces. Writing during a particularly complex time in Scottish literary history, Hogg, a working shepherd for much of his life, is seen to challenge many of the aesthetic conventions adopted by his contemporaries and to anticipate many of the concerns voiced in discussions of literature in recent years. While the essays privilege Hogg's primary texts and read them closely in their immediate cultural context, the volume's contributors also introduce relevant research on oral culture, nationalism, transnationalism, intertextuality, class, colonialism, empire, psychology, and aesthetics where they serve to illuminate Hogg's literary ingenuity as a working-class writer in Romantic Scotland.