Photo: Writers' Museum, Edinburgh. Image by StacyK
Lady Stair's House is one of the oldest buildings in Edinburgh’s Old Town, dating from 1622. Among the exhibits within the Writers’ Museum is Robert Burns’s writing desk.
In 1786, when Burns first visited Edinburgh, he stayed in a house in nearby Baxter’s Close.
That year the Edinburgh Magazine published the first review of Burns’s Kilmarnock Edition of 'Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect'.
The reviewer, Dr Robert Anderson, wrote:
Edinburgh Magazine, 1786Who are you, Mr Burns? Will some surly critic say: at what university have you been educated? What languages do you understand? What authors have you particularly studied? …
To the questions … honest Robert Burns would make no satisfactory answer. My good sir, he might say, I am a poor country man… I understand no languages but my own. I have studied Allan Ramsay and Fergusson. My poems have been praised at many a fireside, and I ask no patronage for them if they deserve none…
In December 1786 Henry Mackenzie’s review noted:
The Lounger, 1786Though I am far from meaning to compare our rustic bard to Shakespeare, yet whoever will read his lighter and more humorous poems, his ‘Dialogue of the Dogs’, his ‘Dedication to G---- H----, Esq.’, his ‘Epistle to a Young Friend’, and ‘To W. S----n’, will perceive with what uncommon penetration and sagacity this heaven taught ploughman, from his humble unlettered station, has looked upon men and manners….
The Writers’ Museum, Lady Stair's Close, is open Monday to Saturday, 10 am to 5 pm, and Sundays in August, 12 noon to 5 pm. Admission is free.
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