Rhona Brown

Scotland, Britain, Europe: parallels with Eighteenth-Century political debate

This article focuses on the controversial eighteenth-century Whig politician, John Wilkes (1725–97), his journalism and his reception in the Scottish periodical press, while considering parallels w...

Literary Communities and Commemorations in the Edinburgh Cape Club

This article examines the roles of literature and poets in Edinburghs Cape Club towards the end of the eighteenth century. It examines the clubs manuscript collection of songs and poems, including a long narrative poem on its history entitled ‘The Capeiad’, to demonstrate that literature had simultaneously celebratory, commemorative and moralistic functions within the Capes private world. It analyses the clubs yearly literary ‘jubilees’, which memorialise James Thomson, author of The Seasons, and William Shakespeare, to reveal the literary networks at play in the Cape, thereby demonstrating that literature is central to its community.

The construction of Robert Fergusson's illness and death

This chapter charts the biographical, fictional and medical constructions of Robert Fergussons (1750-74) illness and death from the late eighteenth to the twenty-first century. Fergusson died at the age of 24 in Edinburghs Asylum for Pauper Lunatics. Thanks to this fact, commentators have become preoccupied with the legend of his illness and death. This chapter analyses the changing attitudes towards Fergussons illness throughout the centuries by interrogating biographical constructions, fictional imaginings and modern diagnoses of his condition, in order to reflect on changing attitudes towards mental illness and artistic creativity.