Who Wrote the Scots Musical Museum? : Challenging Editorial Practice in the Presence of Authorial Absence
James Johnson's Scots Musical Museum (1787-1803) is now inextricably linked to its greatest contributor, the Scots poet Robert Burns. In his Ormiston Roy Lecture, Murray Pittock shows that the simple question "Who Wrote the Scots Musical Museum?" raises complex questions about the nature of authorship and editing in the collaborative and social enterprise of song publication.