Kindle Price: $11.99

Save $6.00 (33%)

Promotions apply when you purchase

These promotions will be applied to this item:

Some promotions may be combined; others are not eligible to be combined with other offers. For details, please see the Terms & Conditions associated with these promotions.

eBook features:
  • Highlight, take notes, and search in the book
Read with our free app
You've subscribed to ! We will preorder your items within 24 hours of when they become available. When new books are released, we'll charge your default payment method for the lowest price available during the pre-order period.
Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at
Your Memberships & Subscriptions

Buy for others

Give as a gift or purchase for a team or group.
Learn more

Buying and sending eBooks to others

  1. Select quantity
  2. Buy and send eBooks
  3. Recipients can read on any device

These ebooks can only be redeemed by recipients in the US. Redemption links and eBooks cannot be resold.
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Follow the author

Catherine MacFarlane Carswell
+ Follow
More books from this author
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

The Life of Robert Burns (Canongate Classics Book 10) Kindle Edition

by Catherine Carswell (Author), Tom Crawford (Introduction) Format: Kindle Edition
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 52 ratings
See all formats and editions
This classic and controversial biography of Scotland’s National Bard offers an unvarnished chronicle of the 18th century poet’s life.

First published in 1930 to an unprecedented storm of protest, Catherine Carswell’s The Life of Robert Burns remains the standard work on its subject. Widely revered as Scotland’s greatest poet, Burns’s devotees were so upset by its contents that Carswell famously received a bullet in the mail, with instructions for its use.

Carswell deliberately shakes the image of Burns as a romantic hero, exposing the sexual transgressions, drinking bouts and waywardness that other biographies chose to overlook. But Carswell’s real achievement is to bring alive the personality of a great man: passionate, hard-living, generous, melancholic, morbid and, above all, a brilliant and inspired artist.

“Catherine Carswell’s The Life of Robert Burns is still, apart from Burns’ own account, the best.”—Alasdair Gray, The Observer, UK

“It is not only an outlandishly good book, but one which raises questions about the nature of Scottish culture and cultural change.”—Sunday Times, UK

“This is a book which makes you feel better for having read it. I only wish a few contemporary biographers wrote as well as Catherine Carswell did.”—Allan Massie, Literary Review, UK
Read more Read less
Previous page
  1. ISBN-13
    978-0862412920
  2. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  3. Publisher
    Canongate Books
  4. Publication date
    May 1, 2009
  5. Language
    English
  6. File size
    3894 KB
  7. See all details
Next page

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Carswell deliberately shakes the image of Burns as a romantic hero--exposing the sexual misdemeanours, drinking bouts and waywardness that other, more reverential, biographies choose to overlook.

About the Author

Catherine Carswell (1879-1946) was born in Glasgow, one of the four children of George and Mary Anne Macfarlane. On leaving school she attended courses in English Literature at Glasgow University but could not, in those days, be admitted for a degree. In 1904, after a brief engagement, she married Herbert Jackson. When in 1905, she told him of her pregnancy, he tried to kill her. Declared insane, he spent the rest of his life in a mental hospital. Catherine returned to Glasgow where her daughter was born, and worked, first in Glasgow and then in London as dramatic and literary critic for the Glasgow Herald. In 1907 she began legal proceedings for the anulment of her marriage. She won the case, making legal history.
Her friendship with D.H. Lawrence was kindled by her favourable review of The White Peacock (1911). They met in 1914 and their relationship lasted until Lawrence's death in. In 1915 she married Donald Carswell, with whom she had one son. In the same year, she lost her job at the Glasgow Herald for praising The Rainbow. Soon after that the Carswells moved briefly from London to Bournemouth. in 1916 she and Lawrence exchanged manuscripts of Open the Door! and Women in Love. Her novel was completed in 1918 and won the Melrose Prize on publication in 1920. Her other novel, The Camomile, was published two years later, after which she devoted herself to The Life of Robert Burns, which made her name in 1930. This was quickly followed by a biography of Lawrence, The Savage Pilgrimage (1932).
After her husband's death during the black-out in 1940, Catherine Carswell lived alone in London. She worked with John Buchan's widow on his memorial anthology, The Clearing House (1946) and on her own autobiography, which was published, incomplete, as Lying Awake in 1950. Carswell died in Oxford at the age of 66.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B004V327XU
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Canongate Books (May 1, 2009)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 1, 2009
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 3894 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 519 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 52 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Catherine MacFarlane Carswell

Catherine MacFarlane Carswell

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
52 global ratings

Top review from the United States

eledavf Vivian
5.0 out of 5 stars A life of defeat and injustice. Scotland never deserved him.
Reviewed in the United States on May 5, 2014
Verified Purchase
Robert Burns could not eke out a decent living in his world. The hard, endless, useless struggle drove him into a relentless downward spiral. Everyone knows the contempt he brought upon himself by his loose ways, but did his contemporaries, his supposed betters, recognize their own contribution to his pathetic and tragic end?

His heart was good. Better than the smug society that turned its back on him. Those women most deeply involved in his life, though of low estate, were nonetheless more worthy of his genius than the disapproving gentlefolk in their tidy parlors.

It was so simple: he needed a secure and sufficient livelihood. Even the heart-wrenching emotion of his simplest words, even the transcendent heights of his patriotic verse could not feed his dependents and himself. He needed the help of an understanding society. A society that in the end did not deserve the glory he brought to his country.

This excellent biography, written with feeling and understanding, kept my interest from first page to last. It did not by any means seek to minimize this great poet's many failings nor to deny his own contributions to his many, many defeats. But he was a helpless animal caught in a trap, a trap into which he was born.

This book gave me, for the first time, an understanding of Robert Burns' predicament. He had lost any hope of being accepted by people whose patronage he needed; he could not cope with the unscrupulous publishing world; and he could not function as a low-level government employee. The world would not pay him what his genius was worth.

Some people have made a fortune from his poetry, many have found immense joy in it, Scotland has been immeasurably ennobled by it, but not one of them deserved him.
4 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report

Top reviews from other countries

mr r f skillen
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 7, 2024
Verified Purchase
Good
Report
Ado
4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 21, 2019
Verified Purchase
Good to read of the background of his lofe
Report
Charles Peter Mugleston
5.0 out of 5 stars A perceptive and beautifully written book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 25, 2023
Verified Purchase
In a world of Rabbie Burns books written by men... it is a most refreshing breath of fresh air to see him through a womans eyes...
Like Maggi Hamblings Scallop sculpture on Aldeburgh Beach though detested by some at first... has now become.... after 20 years... a Suffolk Icon...! Catherines book received the same treatment by some but has since become a classic in its own right about a man who thoroughly believed in Scotland urging Scots to believe in themselves, to stand on their own two feet and become Independent.
I am very glad to be writing this on the day Scotland celebrates their National Bard who like all inspired poets yet writes for everyone. HAPPY BURNS NIGHT EVERYONE. X
2 people found this helpful
 Report
Denniston
5.0 out of 5 stars Why the fuss?
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 8, 2021
Verified Purchase
I read this a couple of years ago and is one of my favourite books up to now. I didn't come away after finishing this book with any negative thoughts on the great man at all. Fact is, Cath Carswell makes him out to be a regular young man who likes his women - unfortunately there was no pill or condoms as their is nowadays - a very talented man (genius is a better description) and a very hard-working man. He had his faults as all great and normal humans have, but he's an incredible, well-loved and still celebrated human and I am very proud he was born in Scotland.
One person found this helpful
 Report
Dr. J. D. Hay
5.0 out of 5 stars One of the great biographies
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 19, 2010
Verified Purchase
It is astonishing that this book was first published in 1930. Its frank and unblinking assessment of the virtues and glaring faults of a great man make it one of the most impressive biographies to come out of the 20th century. Burns' dilemma as impoverished peasant ploughman and (temporary) darling of the polite salons of Edinburgh is beautifully brought out, perhaps because Catherine Carswell was aware of parallels in the life of her friend D.H.Lawrence. Her explicitness about Burns' promiscuous sex-life makes it no surprise to learn that she was fiercely attacked by the 'unco guid' of her day, just as Burns was. Then, as now, people with a distorted understanding of religion turn it into an instrument of condemnation.
6 people found this helpful
 Report
Report an issue

Does this item contain inappropriate content?
Report
Do you believe that this item violates a copyright?
Report
Does this item contain quality or formatting issues?
Report