Annotated List of Subscribers First Edinburgh Edition, 1787 – West Renfrewshire

In 1787, the publication of Burns's first Edinburgh edition of Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect turned the Ayrshire ploughman from a regional to a national poet within a matter of months. The edition was made possible by early subscription – the subscribers’ names being recorded therein. Various attempts to identify the subscribers have since been made, most notably by Burns's biographer J. W. Egerer. However, hitherto, little progress in identifying the subscribers from West Renfrewshire has been made. As a result of research by the current author, for a PhD thesis at the University of Glasgow's Centre for Robert Burns Studies, the following details, which support previous work, have been unearthed.