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Before Reading Meet Robert Burns (1759-1796)
Charming RebelAfter his father’s death in 1784, Burns, along with his brother, struggled to farm independently. Burns became involved with a servant girl at the farm, the first of several liaisons that resulted in illegitimate offspring. In 1786, he fell in love with Jean Armour, but her father, disturbed by Burns’s radical ideas and personal behavior, sent Armour away. Hurt and incensed, Burns resolved to emigrate to Jamaica. To raise the necessary money, he published Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1786), a collection that showed his love for Scottish peasant life. Its immense success induced Burns to move to Edinburgh, where he captivated the city’s literary society with his keen wit, rough-hewn charm, and controversial views on class and religion. Scotland’s Greatest SongwriterIn Edinburgh, Burns began to compile several volumes of Scottish folk songs. Collecting, adapting, and writing songs engaged him for the rest of his life. In his later years, Burns finally married Jean Armour and began working as a tax collector while still maintaining a farm. The arduous farm work undermined Burns’s already weak constitution. At age 37, Burns contracted rheumatic fever and died soon after.
While Reading Date: 2016-03-03; view: 997
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