John Porteous in The Heart of Midlothian: the intersection of history and fiction

On Thursday 9th November 2017 we had a talk by Dr. Ralph McLean. He was introduced by our Chairman, Prof. Peter Garside.

Dr Ralph McLean is Curator of Manuscripts for the Long Eighteenth Century at the National Library of Scotland, where among his duties he has responsibility for the vast collection of manuscripts relating to Sir Walter Scott. Ralph formerly worked (until 2014) as a research associate at the University of Glasgow on the AHRC-funded project Editing Robert Burns for the 21st Century. He has written a number of articles on the Scottish Enlightenment, and has produced an edition of John Home’s tragedy Douglas which includes, for the first time, the pamphlet material surrounding its controversial history. Along with Dr Ronnie Young at the University of Glasgow he has recently edited a collection of essays entitled The Scottish Enlightenment and Literary Culture (2017), which examines the impact of Enlightenment thought on imaginative literature in Scotland during the Enlightenment and beyond. Among his more recent talks, at the National Library of Scotland, has been one on Alexander Howland Smith aka ‘Antique Smith’, famous (or infamous rather) for his forgeries of Scott autograph manuscripts.