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ENGLISH LITERATURE AND HISTORY
Lot 56

BURNS (ROBERT)
COMBE (GEORGE) Four Views of the Skull of Robert Burns, Taken from a Cast Moulded at Dumfries, the 31st Day of March 1834, Edinburgh, W. & A.K. Johnston, 30 April, 1834

1 December 2021, 12:00 GMT
London, Knightsbridge

Sold for £637.50 inc. premium

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BURNS (ROBERT)

COMBE (GEORGE) Four Views of the Skull of Robert Burns, Taken from a Cast Moulded at Dumfries, the 31st Day of March 1834, engraved pictorial title depicting 4 views of Burns' skull after drawings by George Harvey, and the mausoleum erected in his memory at Dumfries in 1815, one page of letterpress description ("Observations on the Skull of Burns"), tipped onto a stub (with further blank leaf) at left hand margin, small hole in upper margin, age soiling to title [OCLC 11143379, 2 copies only; National Library of Scotland, and Dartmouth Library, NH], 4to, Edinburgh, W. & A.K. Johnston, 30 April, 1834

Footnotes

VERY RARE PAMPHLET "ON THE SKULL OF BURNS", only two copies recorded on OCLC. It bears witness to both "the extraordinary hold that the pseudo-science of phrenology had on popular and medical opinion in the first half of the 19th-century" (National Library of Scotland, website) and the on-going hold of Burns on the imagination of the Scottish public. On 1 April 1834 the burial of Robert Burns's widow, Jean Armour took place, her body interred in the family mausoleum in St Michael's churchyard, Dumfries: "The opening of the family mausoleum to accommodate her coffin also finally enabled phrenologists and the merely curious to gain access to the prize specimen of the poet's skull... Having obtained consent from surviving members of the Burns family, the night before Mrs Burns's funeral a party of men, including John McDiarmid, editor of The Dumfries Courier, the surgeon, Archibald Blacklock, and James Bogie, who had assisted in the move of the poet's coffin in 1815, entered the mausoleum. The skull was located, cleaned and a plaster cast taken. It was deemed to be of an extraordinary size as none of the hats of those present fitted over it..." (NLS).

This pamphlet, published less than a month after the skull was exhumed, contains remarks by the leading British phrenologist of the time, Edinburgh lawyer George Combe (1788-1858), a chart listing the "Cerebral Development of Burns", and four views of the skull done by the Scottish artist George Harvey (1806-1876). Combe argues that Burns's skull "indicates the combination of strong animal passions, with equally powerful moral emotions" and that "Burns must have walked the earth with a consciousness of great superiority over his associates in the station in which he was placed".

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