Allan Ramsay (1686-1758)
| Allan Ramsay | |
|---|---|
Portrait painted in 1722
by William Aikman (1682–1731) |
|
| Born |
15 October 1686 Leadhills, Lanarkshire, Scotland |
| Died | 7 January 1758 (aged 71) |
| Occupation | poet |
| Nationality | Scottish |
Allan Ramsay (15 October 1686 – 7 January 1758) was a Scottish poet (or makar), playwright, publisher, librarian, and impresario of early Enlightenment Edinburgh.
Allan Ramsay was born at Leadhills, Lanarkshire to John Ramsay, superintendent of Lord Hopetoun's lead-mines and his wife, Alice Bower, a native of Derbyshire.
Allan Ramsay and his elder brother Robert probably attended the parish school at Crawfordjohn. In 1701 Allan was apprenticed to a wig-maker in Edinburgh. He married Christian Ross in 1712; a few years after he had established himself as a wig-maker (not as a barber, as has been often said) in the High Street, and soon found himself in comfortable circumstances. They had six children. His eldest child was Allan Ramsay, the portrait painter.
Ramsay's first efforts in verse-making were inspired by the meetings of the Easy Club (founded in 1712), of which he was an original member; and in 1715 he became the Club Laureate. In the society of the members he assumed the name of "Isaac Bickerstaff," and later of "Gawin Douglas," the latter partly in memory of his maternal grandfather Douglas of Muthill (Perthshire), and partly to give point to his boast that he was a "poet sprung from a Douglas loin." The choice of the two names has some significance, when we consider his later literary life as the associate of the Queen Anne poets and as a collector of old Lowland Scots poetry.
By 1718 he had made some reputation as a writer of occasional verse, which he published in broadsheets, and then (or a year earlier) he turned bookseller in the premises where he had hitherto plied his craft of wig-making. In 1716 he had published a rough transcript of "Christ's Kirk on the Green" from the Bannatyne Manuscript, with some additions of his own. In 1718 he republished the piece with more supplementary verses. In the following year he printed a collection of Scots Songs. The success of these ventures prompted him to collect his poems in 1720 and publish a volume in 1721. The volume was issued by subscription, and brought in the sum of four hundred guineas. Four years later he removed to another shop, in the neighbouring Luckenbooths, where he opened a circulating library and extended his business as a bookseller. Ramsay is considered to have created the first circulating library in Britain when he rented books from his shop in 1726.
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