Novel
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
James Hogg · 1824
Synopsis
A Lowlands laird marries a devout woman who leaves him for her pastor. She has two sons: the elder, George, grows up with his father; the younger, Robert, with the pastor, who raises him in the belief that he is one of the elect and that nothing he does can damn him. On his eighteenth birthday, Robert meets a young man of his own age who takes on the face of whoever he looks at and who knows his thoughts. The stranger never leaves him again, and explains to him that killing the reprobate is a duty.
Context
The book appeared without an author's name in 1824 and was badly received: it was reproached for its violence and blasphemy, and it disappeared. It was rediscovered more than a century later, when a French novelist carried in this catalogue signed the introduction to an English reissue in 1947; this introduction was reprinted two years later at the head of the first French edition, which he had himself had translated. Its construction nests the narratives one within the other and presents itself as the posthumous edition of a dead man's journal.
Who it is for
Three hundred pages in English, with passages in Scots, translated into French. The first half calls for patience: everything is decided on rereading.
Prizes and reception
Ignored for a century, given a preface in 1947 by a French writer, and since regarded as one of the great novels of the country.