James Hogg - Legacy

Legacy

Among the reading public at large Hogg was, during his lifetime, one of the most admired writers of the day, but this admiration was largely for his success in overcoming the disadvantages of his peasant birth and lack of education. He was considered a man of great natural genius whose uncouth style and subject-matter, so natural for the clownish figure depicted in the Noctes Ambrosianae, should not be held against him. A collected edition of his works was published in the 1830s, after Hogg's death, pruned of some passages which offended the increasing delicacy of the age, and another Works of the Ettrick Shepherd was prepared in the 1860s which took the process even further; some works, for example The Three Perils of Woman, were excluded altogether. Victorian readers of these emasculated texts naturally came to the conclusion that Hogg had been overrated, and that he was notable mainly as an example of triumph over adverse circumstances. Apart from Justified Sinner, which even his detractors acknowledged as unusually powerful (and often attributed to someone else, usually Lockhart), his novels were regarded as turgid, his verse as light, his short tales and articles as ephemera.

This situation only began to change in 1924, when the French writer André Gide was loaned Justified Sinner by Raymond Mortimer. Gide was amazed, writing that "It is long since I can remember being so taken hold of, so voluptuously tormented by any book." Its republication in 1947, with an enthusiastic introduction by Gide, helped bring about the modern critical and academic appreciation of this novel. Growing interest in The Confessions led to the rediscovery and reconsideration of his other work in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Now his novel ‘’The Three Perils of Woman’’ is also considered a classic and all his work, including his letters, is undergoing major publication in the Stirling/Carolina editions. However, Justified Sinner remains his most important work and is now seen as one of the major Scottish novels of its time, and absolutely crucial in terms of exploring one of the key themes of Scottish culture and identity: Calvinism. In a 2006 interview with Melvyn Bragg for ITV1, Scottish novelist Irvine Welsh cited Hogg, especially The Confessions as a major influence on his writing. A James Hogg Society was founded in 1981 to encourage the study of his life and writings. Hogg's story "The Brownie Of The Black Haggs" was dramatised for BBC radio 4 in 2003 by Scottish playwright Marty Ross as part of his "Darker Side Of The Border" series. More recently Ross returned to the villain of that story, Merodach, making him the villain of a Doctor Who audiobook, Night's Black Agents (Big Finish Productions 2010), in which this demonic figure assumes the pose of a Minister of the Kirk.