Researching poet lives

[vivdunstan]

I'm finishing off a book review I'm writing for an academic journal. The book is a new collection of Scottish poems in the long 18th century. Each poet's section includes a short biography before one or more poems from them. And I can't help myself constantly researching the poets and their lives more. My big success last night was confirming one poet being baptised in my home town Hawick in 1764. Far more precise than "born in one of the border counties washed by the Tweed" in DNB etc. He had many siblings baptised in Hawick or Wilton, then younger ones in Gala and Edinburgh before the parents moved to Kilmarnock and more baptised there. I should probably write this up as an academic journal paper too, not least to show the possibilities of easily accessed digitised Scottish parish registers to expand on these life stories.