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"This is a fascinating volume, full of surprises, challenges and confirmations? Gillian Hughes's editorial activities are exemplary: the textual decisions and apparatus inspire confidence and assent, and the genesis of the "Tales" is pieced together from manuscript evidence in an introduction which is a serious piece of scholarly detective work in its own right? [S]he offers finely-observed, stimulating exegesis which will encourage further readings, and the explanatory notes offer some wonderfully suggestive analogies. Altogether, the volume is a revelation."& madash; "Studies in Hogg and his World"

"I like to write about myself: in fact, there are few things I like better?'" so confesses Hogg with pawky self-mocking humour in "Altrive Tales,"

This collection opens with Hogg's own story of how a ragged servant-lad remade himself as a respected professional writer, the associate of Byron, Scott, Southey, Wordsworth and Galt. Hogg's frank and humorous "Memoir of the Author's Life" is widely recognised as a classic of Romantic autobiography and an important record of early nineteenth-century Scottish culture.

The themes of the "Memoir" continue in the tales that follow. "The Adventures of Captain John Lochy" is a fast-paced historical fiction, the autobiography of a social outcast adrift in Scotland, Russia, the Netherlands, and Sweden. "The Pongos" (an early version of the Tarzan story) takes a look at Scottish involvement in the British empire in a comic parody of Enlightenment notions about the nature of man and of society. "Marion's Jock" is a virtuoso exercise in Scots and in Hogg's ability to communicate the peasant lifestyle of his nativeScottish Borders.

This new edition, thoughtfully introduced, extensively annotated and featuring a reading list and Hogg chronology, presents "Altrive Tales" as a major achievement by one of Scotland's finest storytellers.