ABSTRACT
The Edinburgh Magazine, or Literary Miscellany of November and December 1786 reprinted poems by Burns. In January 1787 the poet wrote to thank James Sibbald, its publisher, for ‘the warmth with which you have befriended an obscure man, and young Author, in your three last Magazines’ (Letters I, p. 62). Sibbald (1745–1803) probably wrote this, the earliest review of Burns. His helper Robert Anderson (1750–1830) wrote to James Currie in 1799, ‘I. . . easily prevailed upon the printer of the Edinburgh Magazine to insert some pieces in the poetical article of his Miscellany... The circulation of these extracts, co-operating with the interesting account of Burns in the Lounger, prepared the way for his favourable reception in Edinburgh’ (BC (1923), xxxii, and (1925), xxxiv).
