num_pages: 712
description: Hogg's extremely rare periodical of 1810-11 shows him reacting to the writers, personalities, and locales of Scotland's capital city after his move to Edinburgh from Ettrick and his career-change from shepherd and farmer to professional author. His characteristically astute and idiosyncratic vision reveals a rather different city from that of Walter Scott and Francis Jeffrey, and his band of contributors form another audience for his work than the middle-class Tories associated with the later Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine.The Spy includes early versions of some of Hogg's best-known poetry and prose besides a wealth of fascinating lesser-known material.This is the first edition of The Spy since the original edition of 1810-11 was published, and offers a carefully corrected text, full annotation, notes on Hogg's contributors to his paper, and a history of its making. It represents an advance in our knowledge both of Hogg's early writing career and of the city he encountered early in the nineteenth century.
language: English
title: The Spy: A Periodical Paper of Literary Amusement and Instruction
titlecomplete: The Spy: A Periodical Paper of Literary Amusement and Instruction (The Stirling / South Carolina Research Edition of the Collected Works of James Hogg)
places: Edinburgh, Scotland
series: The Collected Works of James Hogg
publisher: Edinburgh University Press