Confessions of a Justified Sinner

A comic and terrifying novel about a man haunted by the Devil in the form of his own evil double.

James Hogg (1770–1835) was a Scottish poet, novelist, and farmer whose work was discovered by Sir Walter Scott and admired by writers as different as Wordsworth and Byron. His most famous book, Confessions of a Justified Sinner, published in 1824 and set in seventeenth-century Scotland, is a vivid exploration of fanaticism and the power of evil. The novel’s anti-hero, a young man named Robert Wringhim, falls under the influence of an enigmatic, shape-shifting companion, Gil-Martin, who convinces him that he is one of God’s chosen few and thus justified even in committing murder. Robert begins by focusing his murderous intentions on his more worldly and popular half-brother, the son of the Laird of Dalcastle, but before long he is besieged by doubts about his beliefs and even his own identity.

Anticipating Dostoevsky’s great dramas of sin, self-accusation, and damnation by half a century, Hogg’s masterpiece employs a comparable combination of black comedy, bitter realism, and colorful narrative sweep.

Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, and European-style half-round spines. Everyman’s Library Classics include an introduction, a select bibliography, and a chronology of the author's life and times.

With an introduction by Roger Lewis.“Teasingly brilliant... prefigures some of postmodernism's best trickery.... An entertaining ride with the devil.” —The Guardian

“Aptly, given its theme is that of doubles and doubling, Hogg’s is a twice-told tale. The first section, full of fights, town riots, slayings, cross-country escapes and who-knows-what hurly burly in a remote castle, and much else, is comic and rumbustious.... The second section, by contrast, is intimate and terrifying.... We are suddenly on the other side of what it’s like to go insane. After that jaunty, enthralled opening.... it’s like coming across a notebook left behind by Hamlet.”
—from the Introduction by Roger LewisJames Hogg (1770–1835) led a troubled life as a writer. Originally a shepherd, he taught himself to write and finally achieved recognition for his epic poem on Mary, Queen of Scots, The Queen's Wake, and was invited to write for the best-selling journal Blackwood's Magazine. However, Hogg soon became a figure of fun and ridicule in the magazine's satirical 'Noctes Ambrosianae', in which the crude and absurd 'Ettrick Shepherd' was openly modelled on him. It is debated whether this was a source of pain and humiliation to the increasingly ostracised Hogg. His masterpiece, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, only achieved widespread recognition a century after publication, but is now one of the most important novels in the Scottish canon.