The intellectual scope and cultural impact of British writers cannot be assessed without reference to their 'European' fortunes. This collection of 20 essays, prepared by an international team of scholars, critics and translators, records the ways in which Macpherson's Ossian has been received, translated and published in different areas of Europe. The Ossian poems caused a sensation on their first appearance in the early 1760's. Indeed, there is hardly a major Romantic poet on whom they failed to make a significant impression. The essays brought together in this volume explore the reception of Ossian in a wide range of European countries, in both literary and non-literary forms of reception and in the work of both individual writers and national literary cultures.

Author Biography

Howard Gaskill retired in 2001 as Reader in German at the University of Edinburgh. He is editor of The Poems of Ossian and Related Works (Edinburgh University Press, 1996) and co-editor of From Gaelic to Romantic: Ossianic Translations.