Scottish · 1770–1835
James Hogg was a Scottish poet, novelist and essayist, known as the Ettrick Shepherd. Born in the Ettrick Forest in the Scottish Borders, he had little formal schooling and worked as a farm hand and shepherd while teaching himself to read and write. Sir Walter Scott encouraged him after he contributed ballads to the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, and Hogg became a regular contributor to Blackwood's Magazine. His poems include The Queen's Wake (1813), and he wrote many songs and tales rooted in Border folklore. His best-known novel, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824), was largely ignored on release but was rediscovered in the twentieth century. It is now read as a landmark of Gothic fiction and a sharp study of religious fanaticism, and it influenced Robert Louis Stevenson and later Scottish writers. Hogg died in 1835 at Altrive, Scotland.