Six MSS used for the Kilmarnock Edition

Robert Burns sent these manuscripts to John Wilson, the printer in Kilmarnock, for the first edition of his poems. Thereafter they became the property of Burns' friend Gavin Hamilton, a lawyer in Mauchline and the poet's landlord at Mossgiel Farm. They then came into the possession (probably as a gift from Gavin Hamilton) of his relative Hamilton Robinson, originally an apprentice in Hamilton's office, who later set up on his own account as a lawyer in Irvine, where he died. His widow married Alexander Campbell, the Irvine Burgher Kirk Minister (1809-1843), who, In 1837, gave the manuscripts to Mr Patrick Blair, another Irvine lawyer, and a founder member of the club, for Irvine Burns Club. The 17 folio sheets, jealously guarded and preserved for posterity, may be the only surviving manuscripts of the Kilmarnock Edition. They are inlaid in Dutch hand-made paper, and secured between sheets of glass, each of the six volumes bound in Levant morocco.