A Series of Lay Sermons

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A Series of Lay Sermons is a set of eleven moral and religious discourses by James Hogg published in 1834.

Contents

Background

Information on the genesis of A Series of Lay Sermons is virtually non-existent. It seems that Hogg wrote them in 1833, envisaging that they would appear in London under the imprint of James Fraser, who published Fraser's Magazine from its foundation in 1830. After Hogg had parted company with William Blackwood at the end of 1831 Fraser's provided a welcome home for his short prose works and single poems, replacing Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. Hogg also had a difference of opinion with Fraser in the later part of 1833, but they settled their disagreement in November, and it must have been either in the first part of the year or at the end that he sent Fraser the Lay Sermons. [1] On 25 January 1834 Hogg noted that the work was in the press. [2]

Editions

A Series of Lay Sermons on Good Principles and Good Breeding was published in London on 19 April 1834 by James Fraser. [3] There were no further editions until a critical edition by Gillian Hughes appeared in 1997 as Volume 5 in the Stirling/South Carolina Research Edition of The Collected Works of James Hogg published by Edinburgh University Press.

Contents

Sermon I. Good Principles [ensuring a fulfilled old age]

Sermon II. Young Women

Sermon III. Good Breeding [in social conversation]

Sermon IV. Soldiers

Sermon V. To Young Men

Sermon VI. Reason and Instinct

Sermon VII. To Parents

Sermon VIII. Virtue the Only Source of Happiness

Sermon IX. Marriage

Sermon X. Reviewers

Sermon XI. Deistical Reformers

Reception

A Series of Lay Sermons met with an enthusiastic reception from the reviewers, especially for their good sense. The odd one out was Fraser's Magazine, modelled on Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, which produced a mischievous mocking demolition. [4]

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The Spy was a periodical directed at the Edinburgh market, edited by James Hogg, with himself as principal contributor, which appeared from 1 September 1810 to 24 August 1811. It combined features of two types of periodical established in the 18th century, the essay periodical and the miscellany. As an outsider, Hogg used his periodical to give a critical view of the dominant upper-class culture of Edinburgh, with Walter Scott and Francis Jeffrey as its leading lights, and to launch his career as a writer of fiction as well as poetry.

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Winter Evening Tales is a collection by James Hogg of four novellas, a number of short stories and sketches, and three poems, published in two volumes in 1820. Eleven of the items are reprinted, with varying degrees of revision, from Hogg's periodical The Spy (1810‒11).

Queen Hynde (1825) is an epic poem in six cantos by James Hogg. Set in western Scotland in the sixth century, it tells the story of the defeat of an invading Norwegian army by forces loyal to Queen Hynde, advised by Columba, and of the winning of her hand by the legitimate claimant of the throne Eiden. It is mostly in octosyllabic couplets.

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Altrive Tales (1832) by James Hogg is the only volume to have been published of a projected twelve-volume set with that title bringing together his collected prose fiction. It consists of an updated autobiographical memoir, a new novella, and two reprinted short stories.

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References

  1. James Hogg, Lay Sermons, ed. Gillian Hughes (Edinburgh, 1997), xiii‒xv.
  2. The Collected Letters of James Hogg: Volume 3 1832 to 1835, ed. Gillian Hughes (Edinburgh, 2008), 199: Hogg to Simeon De Witt Bloodgood.
  3. Hughes (1997), [xi].
  4. For a survey of the reviews see Hughes (1997), xxvii‒xxix.