The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY LUCY HUGHES-HALLETT

Robert is a difficult and disturbed young man. He comes from a troubled family background and turns to his Calvinist faith for solace but finds it hard to get along with other people, particularly his brother and his dissolute father. After he falls in with the mysterious and charming Gil-Martin his actions become more and more extreme. He convinces himself that he is one of the lucky few who have been chosen for heaven and that therefore all his actions automatically right and good...even murder.

James Hogg was born on 9 December 1770 in Ettrick Forest in Selkirk, Scotland. He worked as a shepherd and taught himself how to read and write before being introduced to Sir Walter Scott who helped him begin his literary career. His first collection of poems,The Mountain Bard, was published in 1807 and this was followed byThe Queen's Wakein 1813. He went on to work forBlackwood's Magazineand published his most famous work,The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, in 1824. James Hogg died on 21 November 1835.

'A Scottish classic, a world classic' Ian Rankin, Observer