We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Like other works in the first series of English Men of Letters, Shairp's 1879 biography of Robert Burns (1759–96) is a work of both history and literary criticism that can be used as an entry point to a wider study of its subject. Literary scholar John Campbell Shairp (1819–85) was born in Linlithgowshire and educated at Oxford. His publications include the essay collection Culture and Religion (1870) and Studies in Poetry and Philosophy (1868), both of which ran to multiple editions. In 1877 he was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford, and held that chair in conjunction with the principalship of the United College of St Andrews until his death. With the insights of a historian and a poet, Shairp explores Burns' life through places lived in and travelled to, before turning to the 'characters, poems, and songs' of a poet widely admired in the late Victorian period.
First published in 1873, this co-authored biography of the Scottish physicist, Alpine explorer, and university leader James David Forbes (1809–1868) includes extracts from Forbes' letters. John Campbell Shairp, Forbes' successor as principal of the United College of the University of St Andrews, writes of Forbes' personal, family, and professional life, including his years at St Andrews. Forbes' student and his successor in the Natural Philosophy chair at the University of Edinburgh, Peter Guthrie Tait, himself an accomplished mathematical physicist who co-wrote, with Lord Kelvin, Treatise on Natural Philosophy (1867), discusses Forbes' scientific achievements and contributions. A. Adams-Reilly, a celebrated Irish mountaineer, cartographer, and friend of Forbes, writes of the latter's Alpine travels and his work and interest in glaciers. In Shairp's words, in addition to all of his academic accomplishments, Forbes was also Britain's 'father of Alpine adventure'.