The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner

'He was constantly harassed with the idea, that the next time he lifted his eyes, he would to a certainty see that face, the most repulsive to all his feelings of aught the earth contained'. Robert Wringhim knows himself to be one of the Elect: predestined for a salvation which nothing he can do, however criminal or bloody, will prevent. With conviction he records his own devout, dark work, committed in the company of his new friend Gil-Martin — who can pass for Robert, and carry other likenesses too. James Hogg's tale of religious fanaticism and evil is a chilling classic of the macabre, and its telling is as troublingly, compellingly duplicitous as Gil-Martin himself. Initially unappreciated, then bowdlerised, it has gone on to have appeal and influence as great as anything in Scottish literature.