SOURCE: Campbell, Ian. “Hogg's Confessions and the Heart of Darkness.” Studies in Scottish Literature 15 (1980): 187-201.

In the following essay, Campbell reads The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner as the depiction of a personal crisis of perverted morality.

James Hogg's masterpiece, the Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, is beginning to receive the critical attention it deserves. Since its anonymous publication in 1824 it has been frequently out of print, and still more frequently misunderstood or interpreted according to partial readings of the text. The purpose of this paper is to examine a crucial area of the plot towards the end of the book, and with a comparison of Conrad's handling of a similar theme in Heart of Darkness, to attempt to clear the ground for the eventual proper critical evaluation of the Confessions.

The form of the novel is brilliant; Hogg's reasonable, rational editor-figure...