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| | Literary Encyclopedia: Hogg, James |
 | | After his failure as a farmer no-one would employ him as a shepherd, and he records that “in February 1810, in utter desperation, I took my plaid about my shoulders, and marched away to Edinburgh, determined, since no better could be, to push my fortunes as a literary man”. |
 | | This innovative periodical published many of his songs, ballads and tales, including his series of “The Shepherd’s Calendar”, which presented the tales, legends, and way of life of Hogg’s native community to an urban and middle-class readership and included ghost-tales, fairy legends, animal stories, and a wonderfully graphic account of a snow-storm. |
 | | His lack of education caused his work to be regarded as flawed, and it was therefore open to censorship and bowdlerisation both in his lifetime and, increasingly, throughout the nineteenth century. |
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