The Best Laid Schemes: Selected Poetry and Prose of Robert Burns

Robert Burns

Jul 2021 · Princeton University Press

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The definitive selection of Robert Burns's best poetry and prose, including some newly discovered verses

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. This is the only comprehensive selection of his work that has discreet line-by-line marginal glossing of the Scots, archaic, and obscure words, allowing readers to understand and enjoy the poems without constantly having to turn to footnotes or a glossary. Newly edited from manuscripts and early printed texts, this definitive, wide-ranging collection also introduces some recently discovered verses—and it is the only edition to present 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.

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Robert Crawford is professor of modern Scottish literature at the University of St. Andrews. His many books include The Bard: Robert Burns, A Biography (Princeton). Christopher MacLachlan is senior lecturer in English at St. Andrews and the editor of Before Burns: Eighteenth-Century Scottish Poetry.