This volume offers Burns's work as it was first encountered by contemporary readers, presenting the texts in the contexts in which they were originally published. It includes the whole of Poems, chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1786), a generous selection of songs with full scores, comprehensive notes, some important letters and a glossary.

Here are 25,000 quotations drawn from the history, politics, literature, religions, science, and popular culture of the world--ranging from the earliest Chinese sages through Shakespeare to the present day.

No writer is more charismatic than Robert Burns. Wonderfully readable, The Bard catches Burns's energy, brilliance, and radicalism as never before. To his international admirers he was a genius, a hero, a warm-hearted friend; yet to the mother of one of his lovers he was a wastrel, to a fellow poet he was "sprung . . . from raking of dung," and to his political enemies a "traitor." Drawing on a surprising number of untapped sources--from rediscovered poetry by Burns to manuscript journals, correspondence, and oratory by his contemporaries--this new biography presents the remarkable life, loves, and struggles of the great poet. Inspired by the American and French Revolutions and molded by the Scottish Enlightenment, Burns was in several senses the first of the major Romantics. With a poet's insight and a shrewd sense of human drama, Robert Crawford outlines how Burns combined a childhood steeped in the peasant song-culture of rural Scotland with a consummate linguistic artistry to become not only the world's most popular love poet but also the controversial master poet of modern democracy. Written with accessible elan and nuanced attention to Burns's poems and letters, The Bard is the story of an extraordinary man fighting to maintain a sly sense of integrity in the face of overwhelming pressures. This incisive biography startlingly demonstrates why the life and work of Scotland's greatest poet still compel the attention of the world a quarter of a millennium after his birth.

Intended for courses with a major focus on poetry during the Romantic period, this volume includes all the poetry selections from Volume 4 of The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, along with a number of works newly edited for this volume. The Broadview Anthology of Romantic Poetry maintains the Broadview Anthology of British Literature’s characteristic balance of canonical favorites and lesser-known gems, featuring a breadth of poetry from William Blake to Phillis Wheatley, from Ebenezer Elliott to Felicia Hemans. To give a sense of the full sweep of the Romantic period, the anthology incorporates important early figures from William Collins to Phillis Wheatley, as well as works by Victorians—such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Alfred, Lord Tennyson—for whom Romanticism was a formative force. “Contexts” sections provide valuable background on cultural matters such as “The Natural and the Sublime” and “The Abolition of Slavery,” while the companion website offers a wealth of additional resources and primary works. Longer works newly prepared for the bound book include Byron’s Manfred and The Giaour, Keats’s Hyperion, and substantial selections from Wordsworth’s fourteen-book Prelude; authors newly added for this volume include Hannah Cowley, Hannah More, Ann Yearsley, Robert Southey, and Thomas Moore.

"There are more statues of Robert Burns in the United States than there are of any American poet. Scotland's favorite poet has been loved by generations of Americans--from Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman to Robert Frost, Maya Angelou, and Bob Dylan. Now this book makes Burns's greatest poetry more accessible to American readers than ever before. Newly edited from manuscripts and early printed texts, this... collection also introduces some recently discovered verses. [It includes] a substantial selection of Burns's important prose writings, including letters and key statements about his art. Edited and annotated by acclaimed Burns biographer Robert Crawford and textual expert Christopher MacLachlan, the book also includes a substantial introduction that puts the poet in biographical, historical, and cultural context. The Best Laid Schemes demonstrates like no other collection why Burns is considered one of the world's greatest poets of love and democracy--and why he continues to entertain, move, and intrigue readers two and a half centuries after his birth."--Publisher description.