Scottish Text Society

This is a bibliography page, concerning a work to which reference is made elsewhere in this guide.

The Scottish Text Society is a learned society, founded in Edinburgh in 1882, on the original initiative of the Minister of Pitsligo in Aberdeenshire, Walter Gregor. Its original purpose was to publish texts that exist only in manuscript or in rare early printed editions and thus make them available to students. Originally, the proposal was to limit publication to "works illustrative of the Scottish Language, Literature and History prior to the Union": in 1937, the range was extended to "the close of the 18th century", and it has now reached the early 19th. The category of "works illustrative of ... History" was ceded to the [History Society], founded in 1886.

Most of the editions published by the Scottish Text Society (widely abbreviated in scholarly work to STS) are of works in Scots; many are the standard editions for scholarly work.. They now number over 150, and fall into five separate series. The First Series (65 volumes) was issued from 1883 to 1918; the Second Series (26 vols) from 1910 to 1930; the Third Series (30 volumes) from 1929 to 1956; the Fourth Series (also of 30 volumes) from 1963 to 2002; and the Fifth Series, which began in 2002, is still (2010) proceeding, with the seventh volume published in 2008. (There is also a DVD of a digitized facsimile of the earliest printing in Scotland: The Chepman and Myllar Prints.) The complete list can be found online at [[1]]. The STS's editions, the majority of which are of texts "in the high period of Older Scots literature, from 1500 to 1700", are all diligently prepared to the highest standards of scholarship, with carefully established texts, meticulously reproduced, and useful and thorough glossaries and notes; they are universally recognized as authoritative versions of sources. The editors, who are not paid, are people of the highest reputation in their field.

To receive copies of the annual additions is one of the benefits of membership. New volumes are published on behalf of the Society by the Oxford University Press. Back numbers can be obtained via the STS Treasurer (Scottish Text Society, 27 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LD, or e-mail: treasurer@scottishtextsociety.org.)

The Society itself maintains a website at [[2]]. A history of the Society was written to mark its first fifty years by Walter B. Menzies, bound with others in the Miscellany volume (1933), volume 4 of the Third Series, Edinburgh, Blackwood, on behalf of the Scottish Text Society. This was updated for the centenary by Alexander Law, in The Scottish Text Society, 1882-1982, Scottish Text Society, 1983. The Early English Text Society is a similar body publishing works written in English, mostly from before the development of printing.