num_pages: 320
description: James Hogg's Confessions of a Justified Sinner has been called 'the greatest novel of Scotland'. Robert Wringhim's family is composed of a father and brother, a pious mother, and a rival father in the person of a fanatical Calvinist minister. He comes to believe that he is one of the Elect, predestined to be saved, while others are damned. Sure of his freedom from the dictates of morality, he embarks on a series of crimes in the company of a new friend Gil-Martin, a man of many likenesses who can be mistaken for Robert, and who explains that they are as one in the holy work of purifying the world. Who or what is this double? Is he the devil? The divided self that appears in the literature of Romanticism is nowhere more powerfully imagined.This new edition has an introduction by Karl Miller, which discusses the presence in the novel of the life and times of James Hogg. It also contains two of Hogg's most interesting stories, 'Marion's Jock' and 'John Gray o' Middleholm'.
language: English
title: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
titlecomplete: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (Penguin Classics)
characters: Robert Wringhim
genres: Literature, Classics, Scotland, Novels, Gothic, Religion, 19th Century, Historical Fiction, Horror, Fiction
ratings_count: 8488
places: Edinburgh, Scotland, Scotland
awards: awardedAt: -694281600000
name: Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger
category: Roman, awardedAt: 978336000000
name: Times Literary Supplement
category: Book of the Year
publisher: Penguin Books