James Hogg

James Hogg was born in Ettrick, Selkirkshire, and baptised on 9 December 1770. His father was a tenant farmer who was ruined, and the boy had only a few months of school before he was sent to herd cattle and sheep. He taught himself to read and write, while his mother passed on a rich store of Border ballads. Walter Scott met him while collecting songs for the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, and the two became lifelong friends. Hogg moved to Edinburgh, failed at farming and journalism, and then won fame with The Queen's Wake in 1813. He wrote for Blackwood's Magazine, where he was caricatured as the Ettrick Shepherd, and produced poems, songs and tales. In 1824 he published anonymously his masterpiece, the Confessions of a Justified Sinner. He married Margaret Phillips in 1820, farmed at Altrive in Yarrow, and died there on 21 November 1835.

James Hogg is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: Raised in the Church of Scotland on the Bible and the Shorter Catechism, Hogg satirised the antinomian abuse of Calvinist doctrine in his Confessions while writing sympathetically of the Covenanters in his tales. Source: Wikipedia

See also: Walter Scott · Robert Burns · Robert Fergusson