The Complete Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns

"Robert Burns is more than Scotland's national poet. With Shakespeare, Burns is an icon for the UK and Scotland he is a national symbol. This volume of poems and songs is a best selling, beautiful edition of his work."--Publisher description.

Complete Poems and Songs of Robert Burns

Drawing on extensive scholarship and the poet's own inimitable letters, this edition offers a wealth of information on Burns's life, the hardships of his early days, his political beliefs, his hatred of injustice, and his fate as a writer too often sentimentalized by biographers and critics. Through his poetry, and as if for the first time, we see Burns as a radical figure in a British as well as a Scottish context, the peer of Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, and Byron in the revolutionary and repressive world of the 1790s. Containing recently attributed and never-before-published poems demonstrating that the poet's political sympathies were more radical than he could safely put his name to in public, The Canongate Burns also includes the sexually scandalous verses known as "The Merry Muses," originally circulated only in handwritten copies. This major and definitive edition offers vitally fresh insights into the irreverent spirit and the democratic convictions of Scotland's greatest poet. "A magnificent and definitive work of scholarship." -- Colm Toibin, The Independent "The Canongate Burns is a very fine edition, and the long introduction ... is alone worth the cover price." -- Andrew O'Hagan, The Scotsman "This scholarly and comprehensive edition of his poems puts those much-loved fragments of wit and whimsy in their full context." -- The Sunday Telegraph

This anthology contains a complete compendium of all poems and songs written by Scotland's national poet - Robert Burns. Arranged according to the date they were written, this anthology contains both famous and lesser known works by Burns. Written in his distinct style, replete with slang and terminology native to his homeland, the poet covers subjects such as love, longing, celebration, politics and emotional expression. Deeply enthralled by the folk history of Scotland, Burns set about finding and collating texts which he used for inspiration. To this day, Burns' poem Auld Lang Syne is sung around the world at the moment the New Year comes in. Other poems, such as A Man's A Man For A' That, are celebrated for their heartfelt depth of sentiment and lyrical beauty. Known for his staunch views against poverty, which were expressed both in his poems and his letters in standard English, Burns abides as an early source of inspiration for both liberal and democratic socialist movements in the UK.