Robert Fergusson was born in Edinburgh on 5 September 1750, the fourth child of William and Elizabeth Forbes Fergusson, who had moved to that city from rural Aberdeen a few years earlier. His father, an educated, restless, and somewhat disappointed...

WRITING THIS ESSAY places me in a position somewhat analogous to that of Robert Fergusson in his address, "To the Principal and Professors of the University of St Andrews". When he referred to them as "my winsome billy boys", he was, as poets...

Burns the Radical: Poetry and Politics in Late Eighteenth-Century Scotland. By LIAM MCILVANNEY. East Linton: Tuckwell. 2002. x+262 pp. 16.99 [pounds sterling]. ISBN 1-86232-177-9. Heaven-Taught Fergusson': Robert Burns's Favourite Scottish Poet. Ed. by ROBERT CRAWFORD. East Linton: Tuckwell. 2003. xii+239 pp. 14.99...

In the following excerpt, Freeman discusses the political views that influenced Fergusson's poetry, characterizing Fergusson as a resolute Scots Tory, Jacobite and nationalist who was often "openly anti-England, Hanover, and Whig," and a "most uncompromisingly political poet."

Daiches is an English critic. In the following excerpt, he offers a chronological discussion of Fergusson's poetry, with a view to describing the poet's artistic development.

In the following excerpt, MacLaine offers an overview of the Scots poetic tradition and discusses Fergusson's place in the Scots poetic revival of the eighteenth century, summarizing his achievement "from both the historical and purely literary points of view. "