The Complete Works of Robert Burns

Robert Burns; life and notices by Allan Cunningham

Poems, songs and correspondence offer a way to read beyond an isolated Burns line. Begin with one complete poem, attend to its speaker and use the surrounding notes cautiously. Scots wording and shifting voices reward rereading. Cunningham contributes the life and editorial notices; those judgements are separate from Burns’s words. His preface discusses omissions and contested attribution, so the title is not proof of exhaustive or settled authorship. This is related reading, not a claim that the linked edition supplied the anthology’s wording.

Who it suits

Readers who want to follow a Burns quotation into a whole poem or song while distinguishing the poet from an editor’s commentary.

Reading experience

Moderate to demanding; Scots vocabulary, historical spelling and long editorial notes benefit from slow reading and attention to context. This is an Edsverb editorial guide, not a measured reading score.

The edition

Edition

English catalogue text with Scots poems and songs; 1855 Boston title-page edition, Phillips, Sampson, and Company, with New York imprint J. C. Derby. Project Gutenberg eBook 18500, released 2006 and updated 2017. Life and critical notices by Allan Cunningham.

Language

English

Publisher

Phillips, Sampson, and Company (Boston); J. C. Derby (New York), 1855 title-page imprints

Project Gutenberg lists this specific electronic edition as public domain in the USA; rights elsewhere are not established here.

Check the edition, language and translator in library results; local availability is not guaranteed. Our reading cards are typographic artwork, not publisher covers. No affiliate links are configured.

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