Poetic mirrors

The Poetic Mirror (1816) has long been recognised as containing some of the best and funniest literary parodies of the Romantic period. Its author, James Hogg (1770-1835), the Ettrick Shepherd, was almost entirely self-educated, and worked as a common shepherd until his midthirties; his Scottish working-class origins equipped him well for the task of satirising some of the excesses of the Romantic poets. Hogg's Poetic Mirror has been out of print since 1929. His little-known New Poetic Mirror (1829-1831) has never been published in full, until now. The present edition, which includes both Mirrors, contains six parodies of Wordsworth, two each of Coleridge, Southey, and Leigh Hunt, and others of Byron, Scott, Thomas Moore, George Crabbe, James Montgomery, and other contemporary writers. The Introduction and Notes by David Groves contain much new information about James Hogg and his relations with the poets and critics of the day.