Description:
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>This article analyses paratextual and self‐editing practices in the work of three eighteenth‐century Scots vernacular poets: Allan Ramsay, Robert Fergusson and Robert Burns. Taking the theories of paratext articulated by Gerard Genette and J. Hillis Miller as its starting‐point, the article considers the varying ways in which these three poets fashioned their own literary personae and, simultaneously, their audience, through prefaces, footnotes and glossing practice. It also explores the relationship between the three poets, analysing the ways in which Burns learned from both Ramsay and Fergusson, and how each navigated his place as poet in the literary market‐place.</jats:p>