ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN (1841 - 1901)

IDYLS AND LEGENDS OF INVERBURN

IDYLS AND LEGENDS

OF INVERBURN

BY ROBERT BUCHANAN

AUTHOR OF “UNDERTONES”

ALEXANDER STRAHAN, PUBLISHER

148 STRAND, LONDON

1865

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LONDON:

BRADBURY AND EVANS PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

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CONTENTS.

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                                                                                                                                                   Page

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ADDITIONAL POEMS IN THE SECOND EDITION:

CLOUDLAND

PASTORAL PICTURES

[Notes:
Idyls and Legends of Inverburn was Buchanan’s fourth book of poetry to be published, although according to his contribution to My First Book, he seems to have disowned the earlier Poems & Love Lyrics and Mary, and other Poems, and refers to the simultaneous composition of Undertones and Idyls and Legends of Inverburn as “My first serious effort in literature”. Undertones was the first to be published:

“The other, Idyls and Legends of Inverburn, was a ruggeder bantling, containing almost the first blank verse poems ever written in Scottish dialect. I selected one of the poems, ‘Willie Baird,’ and showed it to Lewes. He expressed himself delighted, and asked for more. I then showed him the ‘Two Babes.’ ‘Better and better!’ he wrote; ‘publish a volume of such poems and your position is assured.’ More than this, he at once found me a publisher, Mr. George  Smith, of Messrs. Smith and Elder, who offered me a good round sum (such it seemed to me then) for the copyright. Eventually, however, after ‘Willie Baird’ had been published in the Cornhill, I withdrew the manuscript from Messrs. Smith and Elder, and transferred it to Mr. Alexander Strahan, who offered me both more liberal terms and more enthusiastic appreciation.”

Undertones was published in 1863, Idyls and Legends of Inverburn in 1865, and the two were combined the following year in the first ‘collected edition’ of Buchanan’s poetry, published by Roberts Brothers of Boston.

Alexander Strahan published a second edition in 1866, which dispensed with the ‘Preamble’ entirely and omitted two poems, ‘The Minister and the Elfin’ and ‘The Legend of the Little Fay’, which were replaced by a section entitled ‘Juvenilia’ containing two poems, ‘Cloudland’ and ‘Pastoral Pictures’. This edition was republished in 1882 by Chatto & Windus. For the Chatto & Windus 1884 ediiton of The Poetical Works of Robert Buchanan, sections of the original preamble appeared as ‘The Lowland Village’, ‘The Minister and the Elfin’ was reinstated but ‘The Two Babes’ was omitted.]

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