Tam O'Shanter and Souter Johnny, a Poem

This pamphlet volume was put together by Colonel William Hull, a retired Indian Army officer residing at the 'Gothic Cottage', Wimbledon. He had ordered replica figures of the Tam O'Shanter and Souter Johnny statues recently sculpted by James Thom, a self-taught Scottish sculptor. David Auld, the custodian of the Burns Monument in Alloway, had persuaded Thom to attempt 'a more ambitious work' after seeing Thom's bust of Burns based on the portrait by Alexander Nasmyth. Thom carved life-sized statues of Tam O'Shanter and Souter Johnny with no preliminary sketches. Auld was impressed, and these original statues then went on tour, being exhibited in Ayr in July 1828, thereafter Glasgow and Edinburgh, where they received praise from Sir Walter Scott. In April 1829 they were shown in London. Here critics hailed them as 'inaugurating a new era in sculpture', being seen as 'works of untutored genius unconstrained by academic convention and perfectly capturing the spirit of Burns's poetry'. Sixteen replicas of the figures were then said to have been commissioned, along with some smaller scale reproductions carved by Thom and his brother Robert.