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Shara McCallum, No Ruined Stone

Shara McCallum, No Ruined Stone Burns Chronicle 131.2 (2022): 228–236 © Edinburgh University Press www.euppublishing.com/burns Book Reviews Shara McCallum, No Ruined Stone. Peepal Tree Press (2021), 90pp, ISBN 9781845235239. For lovers of Burns, 1786 is the year of years. It has a strong claim to be the most important year in Scottish literary history. The year of the Kilmarnock edition of Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect saw Robert Burns launched into the world as a poet – and the rest is history. And yet, history might so easily have taken a different course. As his biographers and their readers know well, the circumstances surrounding Burns’s first publication enhance the wonder of the miraculous literary birth, setting the scene for the story of how a book saved Scotland’s greatest poet for the nation. In the summer of 1786, Burns, deep in personal difficulties, was making plans to emigrate to Jamaica. While his passage was delayed and delayed again, his Poems, published in late July, were rapidly turning his life around. Instead of heading west, Burns gravitated towards Edinburgh and national fame. The Jamaican plan was scuttled, as Caledonia’s bard sailed into the realms of literary immortality. And yet, as Shara McCallum asks, ‘What would http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Burns Chronicle Edinburgh University Press

Shara McCallum, No Ruined Stone

Stafford, Fiona
Burns Chronicle , Volume 131 (2): 3 – Sep 1, 2022
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Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
Copyright
Copyright © Edinburgh University Press
ISSN
1365-7518
eISSN
2634-7059
DOI
10.3366/burns.2022.0061
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Abstract

Burns Chronicle 131.2 (2022): 228–236 © Edinburgh University Press www.euppublishing.com/burns Book Reviews Shara McCallum, No Ruined Stone. Peepal Tree Press (2021), 90pp, ISBN 9781845235239. For lovers of Burns, 1786 is the year of years. It has a strong claim to be the most important year in Scottish literary history. The year of the Kilmarnock edition of Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect saw Robert Burns launched into the world as a poet – and the rest is history. And yet, history might so easily have taken a different course. As his biographers and their readers know well, the circumstances surrounding Burns’s first publication enhance the wonder of the miraculous literary birth, setting the scene for the story of how a book saved Scotland’s greatest poet for the nation. In the summer of 1786, Burns, deep in personal difficulties, was making plans to emigrate to Jamaica. While his passage was delayed and delayed again, his Poems, published in late July, were rapidly turning his life around. Instead of heading west, Burns gravitated towards Edinburgh and national fame. The Jamaican plan was scuttled, as Caledonia’s bard sailed into the realms of literary immortality. And yet, as Shara McCallum asks, ‘What would

Journal

Burns Chronicle – Edinburgh University Press

Published: Sep 1, 2022

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