John Wilson, Robert Burns, and Printing in 18th-Century Ayrshire, Scotland

FAIN: FT-62054-14

Patrick Greig Scott
University of South Carolina (Columbia, SC 29208-0001)

This proposal is for the first book-length study of the 18th century Scottish printer, John Wilson (17**-1820) of Kilmarnock and later Ayr, best known for Robert Burns's first book, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1786). The project examines the full range of books printed over a forty-year career by Wilson and his brother Peter, with emphasis on Kilmarnock publications, as evidence about cultural continuities in late 18th-century small-town and provincial Scotland, the nature and uneven pace of cultural change away from the major Scottish Enlightenment publishing centres, and the relation of such local printer-booksellers to their influential (and better-studied) contemporaries in Edinburgh and London. A final chapter reconsiders Burns's writing in the context of this publishing ethnography.

Media Coverage

Kilmarnock: Printed by Peter M'Arthur (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Ross McGregor
Publication: Ayrshire CollectionS; East Ayrshire Heritage and Museums
Date: 7/8/2014
Abstract: Report on a visit by Patrick Scott to the Burns Monument Centre, Kilmarnock, to examine books printed in 1780-82 by Peter M'Arthur of Kilmarnock.
URL: www.ayrshirecollections.co.uk/tag/robert-burns/

Associated Products

The First Publication of Robert Burns's 'Holy Willie's Prayer' (Article)
Title: The First Publication of Robert Burns's 'Holy Willie's Prayer'
Author: Patrick Scott
Abstract: Burns’s ‘Holy Willie’s Prayer’ was not published in book form till after the poet’s death, in Thomas Stewart’s Poems Ascribed to Robert Burns (Glasgow, 1801). Burns scholars have differed in the attention they have paid to its earlier separate appearances in chapbook form. This article reexamines the poem’s first chapbook publication, in 1789, of which only one copy is known; briefly describes its later chapbook appearances in 1799; presents bibliographical evidence that the poem was first printed in Kilmarnock itself, in John Wilson’s print-shop where Burns’s first book was produced; discusses the elaborate paratext by which the poem was framed in this first printed presentation; and, based on detailed collation, reassesses the origin and status of the 1789 chapbook text in relation to other textual authorities and competing editorial traditions, concluding that the 1789 chapbook takes us closest to the poem as Burns’s Ayrshire contemporaries first heard it.
Year: 2015
Primary URL: http://asls.arts.gla.ac.uk/SLR.html
Primary URL Description: joutrnal site with abstracts and subscription link
Secondary URL: https://muse-jhu-edu.pallas2.tcl.sc.edu/journals/scottish_literary_review/v007/7.1.scott.html
Secondary URL Description: subscription site
Access Model: subscription only
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Scottish Literary Review
Publisher: Association for Scottish Literary Studies

"William McGill's Meditations and Prayers (Kilmarnock: Wilson, 1789)" (Article)
Title: "William McGill's Meditations and Prayers (Kilmarnock: Wilson, 1789)"
Author: Patrick Scott
Abstract: By bringing together evidence from two incomplete copies, in Glasgow University Library and the Burns Monument Museum, Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, this short article identifies the author, printer, and circumstances of publication for a pamphlet for which previous cataloguing records gave only partial information, and adds a further title to the Wilson imprint bibliography.
Year: 2015
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: The Book Collector (London) (forthcoming)

A Bard Unkend: Selected Poems in the Scottish Dialect (Book)
Title: A Bard Unkend: Selected Poems in the Scottish Dialect
Author: Gavin Turnbull
Editor: Patrick Scott
Abstract: A selection of poems by Gavin Turnbull (1765-1816), a yopunger contemporary of Robert Burns who emigrated to South Carolina in 1795. The introduction argues on the basis of type-ornaments that Turnbull's first book, Poetical Essays (1795) was printed in Kilmarnock on the press of John Wilson, even though the book was published under the imprint of a bookseller David Niven of Glasgow.
Year: 2015
Primary URL: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bard-Unkend-Selected-Scottish-Reprints/dp/1514348519
Primary URL Description: Link for hardcopy print-on-demand version.
Secondary URL: http://scholarcommons.sc.edu/engl_facpub/332/
Secondary URL Description: Open-access full-text in institutional repository.
Access Model: Open access for digital version
Publisher: Scottish Poetry Reprints/University of South Carolina Libraries
Type: Scholarly Edition
ISBN: 978-1514348512
Copy sent to NEH?: No

The Prayer of Holy Willie: the 1789 Chapbook (Book)
Title: The Prayer of Holy Willie: the 1789 Chapbook
Author: Robert Burns
Editor: Patrick Scott
Abstract: Reprints the first chapbook version of Robert Burns's most famous religious satire and argues that it was printed in Kilmarnock on the press of John Wilson, as part of a campaign on behalf of the Rev. Dr. William M'Gill. Also argues that the source used in the annotations to the chapbook, The Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence Display'd, was a reprint locally produced on the same press.
Year: 2015
Primary URL: http://www.amazon.com/The-Prayer-Holy-Willie-hypocritical/dp/1514814307
Primary URL Description: Link for the hardcopy print-on-demand version of the item.
Secondary URL: http://scholarcommons.sc.edu/engl_facpub/333/
Secondary URL Description: Makes available an open-access version of the item through the university's institutional repository.
Access Model: open-acess for digital version
Publisher: Scottish Poetry Reprints/University of South Carolina Libraries
Type: Scholarly Edition
ISBN: 978-1514814307
Copy sent to NEH?: No

"Tracking the Kilmarnock Burns: Allan Young's Censusand the Hunt for Lost Copies" (Article)
Title: "Tracking the Kilmarnock Burns: Allan Young's Censusand the Hunt for Lost Copies"
Author: Patrick Scott
Abstract: Describes the ongoing research and available sources for a collaborative census tracking surviving copies of Burns's first book, printed by John Wilson of Kilmarnock in 1786, classifies the kind of information needed to create a profile of each copy, and recounts representative provenance stories for both surviving copies and previously-known copies that now seem untraceable.
Year: 2015
Primary URL: http://www.electricscotland.com/familytree/frank/burns_lives230.htm
Primary URL Description: open-access general audience Scottish diaspora site
Secondary URL: http://http://scholarcommons.sc.edu/engl_facpub/366/
Secondary URL Description: open-access institutional repository link
Access Model: open access digital only
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Robert Burns Lives!
Publisher: Electric Scotland

The Kilmarnock Burns: A Census (Book)
Title: The Kilmarnock Burns: A Census
Author: Allan Young
Author: Patrick Scott
Abstract: Thev first ever census identifying and describing the surviving copies of Robert Burns's first book, published in 1786 by John Wilson of Kilmarnock. Patrick Scott's introductory essay (pp. xxi-xxxvi) gives a new account of the book's printing and distribution, and the development of collector interest. An extensive historical section gives a chronological account of the book's appearance in sales and auctions.
Year: 2017
Primary URL: http://https://www.amazon.com/Kilmarnock-Burns-Carolina-Scottish-Literature/dp/1976245109/
Primary URL Description: book description from primary supplier
Access Model: Currently for purchase only.
Publisher: South Carolina Scottish Literature Series
Type: Multi-author monograph
ISBN: 1976245109
Copy sent to NEH?: No

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