Winter Evening Tales

Winter Evening Tales (1820; second edition 1821) was James Hogg’s most successful work of prose fiction in his lifetime. Exhibiting the most complex genesis of any of Hogg’s works, it is the outstanding example of a ‘national’ genre pioneered by him – the miscellaneous collection of popular and traditional narratives. Hogg’s experimental medley of novellas, tales, poems and sketches posed a lively alternative to the dominant form of the historical novel established by Walter Scott. The coll...