James Hogg

James Hogg (baptized Dec. 9, 1770, Ettrick, Selkirkshire, Scot.—died Nov. 21, 1835, Altrive, Yarrow, Selkirkshire) was a Scottish poet, known as the “Ettrick Shepherd,” who enjoyed a vogue during the ballad revival that accompanied the Romantic movement.

Hogg spent most of his youth and early manhood as a shepherd and was almost entirely self-educated. His talent was discovered early by Sir Walter Scott, to whom he supplied material for Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. Before publishing The Queen’s Wake (1813), a book of poems concerning Mary Stuart, Hogg went in 1810 to Edinburgh, where he met Lord Byron, Robert Southey, and William Wordsworth. Of Hogg’s prolific poetic output, only a few narrative poems and ballads included in the Wake are of lasting value. Among them are “Kilmeny” and “The Witch of Fife.” Probably a more important work is Hogg’s novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824), a macabre tale of a psychopath that anticipates the modern psychological thriller.