The Collected Works of James Hogg: A series of lay sermonsEdinburgh University Press, 1995 - 176 pages essential to its completeness, but not one of the most exciting of the volumes. It is hard to see it arousing the same level of critical discussion as has followed the re-publication of The Three Perils of Woman under the joint editorship of David Groves, Antony Hasler, and Douglas Mack, for example, or Gillian Hughes's previous volume, Tales of the Wars of Montrose. Even here, some of Hogg's characteristic narrative complexities surface, however. [...] It is a little hard to know what to do with such apparently wanton and provocative narratorial disturbance, the more so as it does not seem to issue in corresponding equivocation in the body of the Sermons themselves. The editor, wisely it seems to me, refrains from attempting a resolution of the inconsistency at this point; it is a notable example of the restraint and good judgment which characterizes her work, a measuredness that keeps it well clear of the strain of over-ingenious interpretation which has accompanied Hogg's just -- |