Peter's Letters to His Kinsfolk

The first complete edition of Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk published since its original appearance in 1819, including the original illustrations, along with extensive new annotation and full editorial apparatus. In Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk (1819) the young John Gibson Lockhart (under the guise of a visiting Welsh physician) portrayed and analysed the society of Regency Glasgow and Edinburgh in terms of German nationalist and Romantic criticism. Focusing on the networks of the law, the church, universities, fine art, antiquarianism, literature, theatre and periodical culture, he provided a series of brilliant, sometimes serious and sometimes satirical, portraits of the most notable characters of the day and the institutions they represented. His text is accompanied by a series of portrait engravings and vignettes of significant moments in his tour. The present edition provides the first complete text of this widely-allusive work published since 1819, together with a substantial Introduction, Notes and full editorial apparatus, including a detailed index and an essay on the contemporary illustrations. Peter Garside is Professorial Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. He has served on the Boards of the Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels and Stirling / South Carolina Research Edition of the Collected Works of James Hogg and has published a variety of volumes for these scholarly editions. Gillian Hughes is an independent scholar. She works as an advisory editor for the Edinburgh Edition of Walter Scott's Poetry and for the New Edinburgh Edition of the Works of Robert Louis Stevenson. She has published critical editions of works by each of these writers and a biography of James Hogg (2007).