{"product_id":"burns-robert-the-poetical-works-and-letters-of-robert-burns-with-copious-marginal-explanations-of-the-scotch-words-and-life","title":"BURNS, Robert. The Poetical Works and Letters of Robert Burns, with Copious Marginal Explanations of the Scotch Words, and Life.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eUnburnt Burns\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBURNS, Robert.\u003c\/strong\u003e The Poetical Works and Letters of Robert Burns, with Copious Marginal Explanations of the Scotch Words, and Life. \u003ci\u003eEdinburgh: Gall \u0026amp; Inglis\u003c\/i\u003e. [S.a. (c. 1880?)]\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Nineteenth-century Mauchline ware binding reusing wood from the Douglas Room, Stirling Castle, upper board lettered ‘Warranted made of the Wood of the DOUGLAS ROOM, STIRLING CASTLE. Saved from the Fire of 18th Novr., 1855’. calf spine lettered directly in gilt and tooled in black and gilt, edges gilt and gauffered, red silk place-marker, marbled endpapers; pp. xxxvi, 656, with 8 steel-engraved plates; joints and endcaps somewhat rubbed, small chip to head of spine; light offsetting from plates, else internally clean and bright; a very good copy; old ownership inscription of Jessie Hunter to front flyleaf.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA handsome edition of Robert Burns’s poems, this copy in a Mauchline ware souvenir binding reusing wood from the Douglas Room of Stirling Castle, recovered from the fire of 1855; Burns had visited in 1787 en route to Inverness, and the dilapidated castle inspired his poem ‘Stirling Lines’.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStirling Castle, one of the most frequently used Scottish royal residences, was the childhood home of Mary, Queen of Scots, as well as the site of her coronation. The wood used in this binding was taken from the castle’s Douglas Room, where William, 8th Earl of Douglas, was stabbed to death twenty-six times by King James II on 22 February 1492. From 1800, the castle was owned by the War Office and used as military barracks. The Douglas Room was severely damaged by fire on 18 November 1855 when a piece of coal fell from an officer’s fireplace gate in the Governor’s House.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBurns made his tour of Sterlingshire in October 1787. ‘While they may have had a business angle (since he visited some his subscribers), Burns’s 1787 Scottish tours developed and confirmed his interest in lowland ballad and song culture, as well as Ossianically refracted highland lore; the tours suggest his wish to assemble a sense of different Scotlands that would nourish him in his role as “Caledonia's bard”, and they undergird his developing work as a collector and remaker of songs and folk poetry’ (ODNB). By this time, the castle had fallen into disrepair, Daniel Defoe having already described the royal apartments as ‘all in decay’ during his visit in 1720. Burns used a diamond pen given to him by the Earl of Glencairn to etch his poem mourning the former glory of the Stuarts into the window of a local inn:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eHere Stuarts once in glory reigned,\u003cbr\u003eAnd laws for Scotland’s weal ordained;\u003cbr\u003eBut now unroofed their palace stands,\u003cbr\u003eTheir sceptre’s swayed by other hands;\u003cbr\u003eFallen, indeed, and to the earth\u003cbr\u003eWhence grovelling reptiles take their birth,\u003cbr\u003eThe injured Stuart line is gone.\u003cbr\u003eA race outlandish fills their throne; An idiot race, to honour lost;\u003cbr\u003eWho knows them best despise them most.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAlthough the original was destroyed (Burns is thought to have returned several months later to smash the window), the poem had already begun to circulate in manuscript.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMauchline ware – generally bearing transferred images and made of sycamore wood – was used largely for small wooden souvenirs and was developed in the 1820s in Mauchline, East Ayrshire, where Robert Burns spent one of the most creative periods of his life. It was there, for example, that he wrote ‘To a Mouse’ (written after he had turned up a mouse’s nest on Mossgiel Farms) and ‘The Holy Fair’. Burns also started his married life in Mauchline, marrying Jean Armour in 1788; their daughter, Elizabeth Riddell Burns, died there at the age of three.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn this edition, ‘the more Objectionable Passages and Pieces are excluded’ (p. [i]).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2125118\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Henry Sotheran Limited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":64400340943225,"sku":"2125118","price":475.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2125118.jpg?v=1787936859","url":"https:\/\/sotherans.co.uk\/products\/burns-robert-the-poetical-works-and-letters-of-robert-burns-with-copious-marginal-explanations-of-the-scotch-words-and-life","provider":"Sotherans","version":"1.0","type":"link"}