Allan Ramsay was an important contributor to the Scottish Enlightenment, creating new verse and translating existing texts. Within Edinburgh’s literary world he also established a circulating library, considered to the be the very first in the world to lend out books for a fee.
Ramsay was born at Leadhills, Lanarkshire, where he became interested in Scottish folklore and poetry. In his late teens, he moved to Edinburgh to become a wigmaker, setting up his own business on the High Street in the first decade of the 18th century whilst keeping up his interest in verse making.
In 1711 he became an original member of the Easy Club, a society established to encourage its gentlemen members to develop their intellectual curiosity. Ramsay developed his writing skills in this environment, becoming the club’s Poet Laureate four years later.
As the decade progressed, he became renowned as a writer, his work appearing in broadsheets. Around 1717 he gave up on wig-making, transforming his premises into a bookshop. In the early 1720s he extended his business into property at Luckenbooths where in 1726 he set up his circulating library.
Throughout this period of expansion, he published several anthologies of Scottish songs and his own poems. His admiration of London theatres led him to establishing one in 1736 at Carrubber’s Close on the Royal Mile, but this was to be a short-lived venture, closing the following year due to opposition.
In 1755 he retired to Ramsay Lodge, an octagonal house on the slope of Castle Rock that bears his name to this day.
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'Allan Ramsay: Writing the Scottish Enlightenment' - National Library of Scotland
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