page_title: James Mackintosh Kennedy
section_title: Writings
hierarchical_section_title: James Mackintosh Kennedy / Writings
caption_attribution_description: English: James Mackintosh Kennedy poem "St. Andrew and the Haggis" from Scottish and American Poems, 1899, pp. 55-56. James Mackintosh Kennedy
context_page_description: James Mackintosh Kennedy was a Scottish-American poet, editor, and engineer.
context_section_description: James Mackintosh Kennedy was a keen observer of human nature and wrote with sympathy and humor. He was well-known and honored for his poetry, being selected as the official poet for the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn in 1914.
  James Kennedy’s writings were published extensively in the Caledonian, a monthly journal for Scottish immigrants in the United States.  His contributions included poetry, short stories, character sketches, and biographical articles.
  Kennedy also published technical articles in Railway and Locomotive Engineering : A practical journal of railway motive power and rolling stock, published monthly by the Angus Sinclair Company, and a book on locomotive engineering. He became an associate editor for this journal in 1905 and became Editor-in-chief and President upon Sinclair’s death in 1919.
  Following is a list of books published by James Kennedy:
  1872: Jock Craufurt: a poem in the Scottish dialect.  A long romantic poem.
  1883: Poems, Songs and Lyrical Character Sketches.
  1883: Poems on Scottish and American Subjects.
  1888: The Deeside Lass, and Other Poems.  The long poem is the story of the laird’s son Donald who falls in love with the servant girl Jean who had been taken in as an orphan; the laird sees the virtues in Jean, but the laird’s wife is furious, and the pair run off.  
  1899: The Scottish and American Poems of James Kennedy.
  1910: The valve setter's guide: A treatise on the construction and adjustment of the principal valve gearings used on American locomotives.
  1920: The Complete Scottish and American Poems of James Kennedy.
  Most of these books are available online and/or in reprint. Several are described as: "This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it."
  A sampling of his poems is presented below.
  Kennedy's family has annotated a collection of his letters (Letters to My Daughters: 1910-1916) and compiled a biographical document.  Below is an excerpt from a letter by James Kennedy to his daughter Isabella, written August 15, 1901, on the subject of "husbandry."
caption: Poem by James Mackintosh Kennedy. Scottish and American Poems,[9] pp. 55-56.
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