Robert Burns

Pocket clothbound volumes from the world's greatest poets, and with a stunning range of anthologies. Each volume has an elegant jacket, full cloth sewn binding, silk ribbon marker and headbands, with gold stamping on front and spine and decorative endpapers. In size, price and presentation they make ideal gifts and are a joy to read and collect. More than eighty titles in print.

Hardback Everyman Edition of Robert Burns Collected Poems and Songs. 
 
...For auld lang syne, my dear, For auld lang syne, We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet, For auld lang syne!'

Robert Burns was born into a farming family at Alloway in Ayrshire in 1759. He died in Dumfries at the early age of 37. Yet in that short time he had taken the Scottish literary world by storm, and had secured a place for himself in history and in legend.

The perfect gift for poetry lovers. A comprehensive collection of the Scottish Bard's songs and poems. 
 
The 19th-century scholar and educationalist J S Blackie summed up Burns's importance to Scotland and the Scots with the words: 
'When Scotland forgets Burns, then history will forget Scotland.' 
Today, Burns is unique in the affection and fascination that his memory inspires. The fruits of his legacy can be seen not only in Scotland but around the world - on product packaging, in advertising and on a wealth of merchandise, as well as through continued scholarship and academic study.

Selected Poems

A unique collection of the finest poems and songs from the Scottish Bard

Robert Burns was born in 1759, the son of a struggling tenant farmer in Ayrshire. Lucky enough to be educated, Burns immersed himself in the literature of Milton and Sterne, discovering the possibilities of contemporary literature in Scots during his twenties. He died in 1796. 
 
 
Carol McGuirk is a Professor of English at Florida Atlantic University. Her publications include Robert Burns and the Sentimental Era and essays on eighteenth-century poetry.

This selection gives equal weight to the two aspects of Robert Burns's reputation, as a lyricist and as a much-loved Scottish poet. Placing works in probable order of composition, it includes lyrics to his most well known songs, such as the nostalgic Auld Lang Syne, the romantic A Red, Red Rose, and the patriotic Scots What Hae. As a poet, Burns wrote with deceptive simplicity and imaginative sympathy, and demonstrated enormous range - from comic dramatic monologues such as Holy Willie's Prayer, which mocks hypocrisy, to narratives including the celebrated Tam O' Shanter, about the ghostly visions of a drunk.

Ian Rankin

The farmer&rsquo;s boy from Ayrshire who went on to be the most acclaimed of all Scottish poets, celebrated around the world, Robert Burns is a greater and more varied artist than those that know him only through annual Burns&rsquo; Suppers and choruses of his &lsquo;Auld Lang Syne&rsquo; at New Year could imagine. 
 
 This new selection by Ian Rankin of verses and lyrics from Scotland&rsquo;s national poet, the &lsquo;Heaven-taught ploughman&rsquo;, reveals a writer capable of evoking tremendous sympathetic power from his readers and with an easy, astonishing command of the sounds and rhythms of both standard English and the evocative Scots tongue. It also reveals an artist of incredible range. His &lsquo;Tam O&rsquo; Shanter&rsquo;, with its midnight pursuit of witches from a grisly graveyard dance, is gripping, fantastical and funny in equal measure, &lsquo;Is there for honest poverty&rsquo; beautifully expresses the egalitarian spirit by which Burns became a political hero for so many, and sentiments both romantic (&lsquo;Ae Fond Kiss&rsquo;) and bawdy (&lsquo;The Fornicator&rsquo;) co-exist in this canny selection of the best of the Scottish Bard.

Robert Burns

Books by Robert Burns

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter