British Books

Readers will be surprised if they see the title of James Hogg’s “The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner” and expect a straightforward account of religious belief: It’s far from that. The Scottish writer’s fourth novel, published 200 years ago, depicts a fatal sibling rivalry and one young man’s descent into evil and madness.

This multilayered gothic work takes bold thematic and formal risks. While British gothic novels had tended to feature Catholic settings and critique Papist superstition, Hogg sets his action in early 18th-century Scotland and incorporates (and satirizes) distinctly Protestant beliefs. The novel also integrates a variety of narrative forms, as well as competing accounts of events, to raise difficult questions regarding how we can arrive at the truth about the present, let alone the distant past. Indeed, the work dwells on uncertainty, presenting frequent instances of characters misled by their religious convictions, their senses, their reason, and even the written word.

In part because of its complex form and narrative contradictions, Hogg’s novel sold poorly when it was first published and was largely neglected for more than a century. Only in the mid-20th century did readers and scholars, conditioned by decades of literary modernism, recognize it as a fascinating depiction of religious fanaticism, psychological horror, and the limits of human knowledge.

The novel tells of the troubled life of Robert Wringhim and the murder of his estranged brother, George Colwan. We see this fraternal feud through two narratives. In the first, a fictional, unnamed editor presents an account based on the historical record, court documents, and local lore. In the second, we encounter Robert’s memoir, which begins as a strident statement of self-righteous religiosity and ends as a guilt-ridden account of psychological terror.

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