Robert Burns Biography Quotes 15 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
Robert Burns was born on 25 January 1759 in the village of Alloway, Ayrshire, the eldest son of William Burnes (or Burness), a self-taught tenant farmer and gardener, and his wife, Agnes Broun. His parents placed great value on learning, and Burns received a mix of home instruction and schooling from tutors such as John Murdoch. The family moved from Alloway to the hard, unprofitable holding of Mount Oliphant and later to Lochlea near Tarbolton, experiences that forged Burns's sympathy for rural laborers and sharpened the social edge of his verse. With his brother Gilbert, he shouldered heavy work from an early age, but he read voraciously, absorbing the Scots tradition of Allan Ramsay and the vigorous example of Robert Fergusson, whom he later memorialized with a headstone in Edinburgh's Canongate Kirkyard.

Formative Years and First Poems
By the early 1780s, Burns had joined the convivial life of Tarbolton, attending local clubs and the Masonic lodge, and he began circulating satirical and reflective poems among friends. After William Burnes died in 1784, Robert and Gilbert attempted to make a living at Mossgiel Farm near Mauchline. There Burns found his voice in a series of poems that mingled humor, moral critique, and affection for ordinary people. Works such as The Twa Dogs, Address to the Deil, The Cotter's Saturday Night, Holy Willie's Prayer, and To a Mouse arose from close observation of neighbors and the strict Calvinist culture around him. His friendships with the lawyer Gavin Hamilton and the Ayr provost John Ballantine helped sustain his ambitions during these uncertain years.

Love, Family, and Entanglements
Burns's personal life was intense and often complicated. With Elizabeth Paton, a servant in the household at Mossgiel, he had a child in 1785. His courtship of Jean Armour led to a stormy path toward marriage; her family initially opposed him, and their twins were born in 1786 while his fortunes were still precarious. In 1786 he also formed a passionate bond with Mary Campbell, remembered as "Highland Mary", whose sudden death shortly afterward left a mark on his poetry. During his rise to fame he conducted an emotionally charged correspondence in Edinburgh with Agnes Maclehose, the "Clarinda" of his letters, addressed in poems such as Ae Fond Kiss. Jean Armour ultimately became his enduring partner; they married formally in 1788 and built a household that would weather poverty, celebrity, and his frequent absences.

The Kilmarnock Edition and Edinburgh Fame
Planning to emigrate to Jamaica for a plantation post, Burns instead published Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect at Kilmarnock in July 1786 with the printer John Wilson. The book's immediacy, wit, and humanity created a sensation. Encouraged by patrons like John Ballantine, he went to Edinburgh that winter to prepare an expanded edition with the publisher William Creech. In the capital he was welcomed into polite society and the salons of the Scottish Enlightenment, meeting figures such as the philosopher Dugald Stewart and critic Henry Mackenzie, who hailed him as a "Heaven-taught ploughman". The painter Alexander Nasmyth produced the best-known portrait of Burns in 1787, fixing the public image of a poet still fresh from the plough. He made literary pilgrimages and tours, traveling the Borders with Robert Ainslie and later the Highlands with the schoolmaster William Nicol, collecting songs and soaking up history and lore.

Farmer, Neighbor, and Friend
Despite fame, Burns remained determined to secure steady work. Through the influence of the banker and landowner Patrick Miller, he leased Ellisland Farm on the Nith in 1788. Farming remained challenging, but Ellisland yielded poems of power and range. The antiquary Captain Francis Grose, preparing his Antiquities of Scotland, asked for a tale to accompany an image of Alloway's Auld Kirk, prompting Burns's masterly narrative poem Tam o' Shanter (1790). Nearby at Friars' Carse, Captain Robert Riddell offered a library and companionship; at Dumfries, the bookseller Peter Hill and other friends sustained a lively circle. Burns also rose within Freemasonry and maintained the web of patrons that had supported him since Ayr, notably Lord Glencairn, whose early advocacy in Edinburgh he never forgot.

Collector and Songwriter
If his poems secured his reputation, his work as a song collector and songwriter deepened and broadened it. From 1787 onward he was the driving spirit behind James Johnson's multi-volume Scots Musical Museum, contributing, revising, and annotating more than two hundred songs. He transformed fragmentary airs into enduring pieces, providing new words or refining traditional verses, while preserving the character of Scotland's vernacular music. From 1792 he also collaborated with George Thomson on the Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs, often supplying dignified, singable lyrics to melodies Thomson paired with arrangements by leading composers. Among the songs most associated with him are Auld Lang Syne, A Red, Red Rose, Scots Wha Hae, and For a' That and a' That, works that balance tenderness, patriotism, and a belief in the worth of common humanity.

Exciseman and the Dumfries Years
To stabilize his income, Burns joined the Excise in 1789; by 1791 he had given up Ellisland and moved with Jean Armour and their growing family to Dumfries, taking a full-time excise post that sent him on horseback across the district. He continued to write, often drafting verses between inspections and social calls. The Dumfries period brought flashes of lyric perfection and an increasing engagement with politics. Early sympathy for the French Revolution and outspoken egalitarian sentiments brought official scrutiny, and Burns corresponded with Robert Graham of Fintry, a senior figure in the Excise, to safeguard his position. He tempered controversy by composing loyal pieces and by enlisting in the Royal Dumfries Volunteers in 1795, yet the bite and independence of his voice remained unmistakable.

Illness and Death
Years of strain, earlier bouts of rheumatic fever, and relentless work eroded Burns's health. In the summer of 1796 he went to the shore at Brow on the Solway Firth to recuperate under medical advice, but he declined rapidly. He returned to Dumfries and died on 21 July 1796, aged thirty-seven. The town turned out for a large funeral at St Michael's Churchyard; on the same day a son, Maxwell, was born to Jean Armour. Friends and admirers soon rallied to support the family, and his brother Gilbert helped organize his papers. The poet's short life had been crowded with achievement and hardship in equal measure, illuminated by the steadfastness of Jean and a loyal circle that included James Johnson, George Thomson, and many companions from Ayrshire to Dumfries.

Style, Themes, and Legacy
Burns wrote in Scots and in English, with a gift for the keenly observed phrase and the quick turn from humor to pathos. His dramatic monologues and satires rise from everyday speech, yet they draw on classical poetics and the humane ideals circulating in the Scotland of his time. He championed dignity in poverty, found grace in rural custom, and set personal feeling to melodies that made his words portable across generations. His influence radiated through the nineteenth century and beyond, shaping literature and song while anchoring a modern sense of Scottish identity. The annual Burns Suppers held around his birthday, recitations of Tam o' Shanter, and the global singing of Auld Lang Syne at year's end attest to a legacy grounded as much in communal tradition as in literary scholarship. Central to that legacy are the relationships that sustained him: the guidance of William Burnes and Agnes Broun, the steadfastness of Gilbert, the devotion of Jean Armour, the encouragement of John Ballantine and Lord Glencairn, the collegiality of Captain Robert Riddell, and the editorial partnerships of James Johnson and George Thomson. Through them, and through the lives his poems continue to touch, Burns remains Scotland's most widely loved poet.

Our collection contains 15 quotes who is written by Robert, under the main topics: Witty One-Liners - Wisdom - Friendship - Honesty & Integrity - Poetry.

Other people realated to Robert: John Greenleaf Whittier (Poet), William Ernest Henley (Poet), Allan Cunningham (Poet), David Allan (Artist), James Hogg (Poet)