A review by brucefarrar
The Best Laid Schemes: Selected Poetry and Prose of Robert Burns by Robert Burns, Christopher MacLachlan, Robert Crawford

5.0

This is an excellent introduction to Burns’s work including the most popular and widely anthologized poems: “A Red Red Rose,” “To A Mouse,” “Tam o’ Shanter,” and “Auld Lang Syne,” as well as dialogs between dogs, bridges, sheep and master, man and devil, poems in praise of wealthy supports, and ones in praise of revolutions that overturned the social order in France, and threw off British rule in America. Poems rediscovered from manuscripts and some published anonymously or posthumously to avoid political reprisal are also included. Burns’s many romantic poems are included as well as his poems in rude Scots and English vernacular in praise of coitus, a favorite subject and activity of the poet.

The book also includes a few of his letters, extracts from his journal, an up to date bibliography, and a helpful introduction with a short biographical sketch. For me, as an English language reader, the most helpful feature of this volume is the editors’ line-by-line glossing of Scots words