Life Of Robert Burns by Thomas Carlyle - Books

Life of Robert Burns

By Thomas Carlyle Biographies & Memoirs 01/01/1881

This is a biographical history book. Robert Burns is the best loved Scottish poet, admired not only for his verse and great love-songs, but also for his character, his high spirits, 'kirk-defying', hard drinking and womanising! He came to fame as a poet when he was 27 years old, and his lifestyle of wine, women and song made him famous all over Scotland. He was the son of a farmer, born in a cottage built by his father, in Alloway in Ayr. This cottage is now a museum, dedicated to Burns. As a boy, he always loved stories of the supernatural, told to him by an old widow who sometimes helped out on his fathers' farm and when Burns reached adulthood, he turned many of these stories into poems. After the death of his father in 1784, Burns inherited the farm but by 1786 he was in terrible financial difficulties: the farm was not successful and he had made two women pregnant. Burns decided to emigrate to Jamaica so to raise the money required for this journey, he published his 'Poems in the Scottish Dialect' in 1786, which was an immediate success. He was persuaded not to leave Scotland by Dr Thomas Blacklock and in 1787 an Edinburgh edition of the poems was published. He married Jean Armour in 1788 - she had been one of his many women during his early life. A very forgiving wife, she accepted and took responsibility for all Burns' children, legitimate and illegitimate alike. His eldest child, the first of three illegitimate daughters all called Elizabeth, was greeted with the poem 'Welcome to a Bastard Wean'.