Macpherson the Historian

We are celebrating Seachdain na Gàidhlig (World Gaelic Week) with an exciting new publication

Mairi and Jim MacPherson’s new book, Macpherson the Historian, is all about how James ‘Ossian’ Macpherson (1736–1796), a Gaelic-speaker from Badenoch, became a leading figure in the Enlightenment. James wrote as an historian across his poetry, narrative histories, and political pamphlets, from his translations of Ossian to his defence of the British imperial state in the 1770s.

This is the first book-length study of James Macpherson (1736-1796) that considers him as an historian. From his early poetry, to the Ossianic Collections, his prose histories, and his later political writing, Macpherson’s subject was the past and he engaged with the latest Enlightenment theories about how to write history.

The book examines James’ published works, from the neoclassical verse of The Highlander (1758) to his pamphlets defending the British imperial state during the late 1770s. In all of these texts, Macpherson wrote as an Enlightenment historian, where ideas about narrative, philosophy, and erudition were interwoven with eighteenth-century debates about the Highlands, commercial modernity, and the British Empire.

Macpherson the Historian begins and ends with the wonderful Gaelic elegy composed by Donnchadh MacAoidh (Duncan MacKay) on the death of James two hundred and twenty-seven years ago in February 1796, which celebrates his life as a writer, politician, landlord and Gael.

Listen to poet and UHI colleague, Dr Anne Frater of UHI Outer Hebrides, recite the moving words of this elegy in its original Gaelic.

The book is currently available for pre-order through Edinburgh University Publishing.

Dr Mairi MacPherson is an academic, heritage professional and community organiser.

Dr Jim MacPherson is Reader in History at the UHI Centre for History.