In starting The Three Perils of Man Hogg embarked on an ambitious project of emulating and perhaps surpassing his friend and rival Walter Scott in Scott's own chosen literary territory,
chivalry and the Borders. Originally envisaged as a two volume 'Border Romance', entitled The Perilous Castle and centred around Roxburgh Castle, it expanded to include events at Aikwood,
another castle and home of the legendary wizard Michael Scott, leading eventually to the adoption of the title The Three Perils of Man: War, Women, and Witchcraft. Hogg offers a devastating
critique of chivalry and combines it with a study of the supernatural, an area in which he had been steeped from his childhood, and which produces some of his finest writing, including a
magnificent portrait of the Devil disguised as an abbot. A host of other characters led by the lovable Charlie Scott of Yardbire provide us with a vision of everyday Borders life and values to
set against the more fantastic worlds of chivalry and wizardry. Included in the novel is a story-telling contest which features some of Hogg's most powerful short stories.
This edition is based on the first edition of 1822 but draws on the newly available manuscript in the Fales Library of New York University to provide a number of new readings, including the
restoration of Hogg's original audacious choice of the name Sir Walter Scott for a key character. It includes an introduction describing the genesis, composition, publication and subsequent
revision of the novel, a historical and geographical note, full explanatory notes and a glossary. It also contains a comprehensive essay on the manuscript by Gillian Hughes.
Judy King is a Research Fellow in English at Flinders University. With J.H. Alexander and Graham Tulloch, she has edited Walter Scott's The Siege of Roxburgh and Bizarre, and, with Graham
Tulloch, Scott's Shorter Fiction and Catherine Helen Spence's Tenacious of the Past. She has also published articles on Beowulf.
Graham Tulloch is Professor of English at Flinders University and has published books and articles on Scottish language and literature. He has edited Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, Marcus Clarke's His
Natural Life and Catherine Martin's An Australian Girl and has co-edited several texts with Judy King.
Gillian Hughes is the author of James Hogg: A Life (2007), and has edited or co-edited a number of volumes in the Stirling/South Carolina Edition of his works, including the three-volume
Collected Letters of James Hogg (2001-8). She was the founding editor of Studies in Hogg and his World and is currently working towards a new Hogg bibliography.
