Robert Burns | Biography and Important Works

Robert Burns was a Scottish poet and lyricist born on 25 January 1759 and died on 21 July 1796 at 37. He is known for his works written in the Scottish language but he also wrote in the Scottish dialect of the English language.
Robert Burns is one of most celebrated and respected Scottish poets and author and he is also known as the ‘National Poet of Scotland.’ Burns is considered a proto-Romantic poet who greatly influenced William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Robert Burns was the eldest son of William Burns, a poor tenant farmer in Dunnottar, Scotland. His mother was Agnes Broun. His childhood was spent in a house built by his father that was later turned into the Burns Cottage Museum.
Robert Burns faced poverty, scarcity, and other problems of tenant farmers and was hugely influenced by it. At one time, he faced such dire poverty that he decided to move to Jamaica to work as a laborer. However, his friend Thomas Blacklock encouraged him not to go to Jamaica. It was the period of the French Revolution and Burns had a first-hand experience of the deteriorating situations of tenant farmers in Scotland and England that inspired him to write poetry and correspondences touching the subjects of Republicanism, Radicalism, Egalitarianism, Humanitarianism, gender equality, and so on. This is the reason why he is known as a proto-Romantic poet.
Burns often raised awareness about the dire situations of tenant farmers and other poor people in society in his works which is why he is also known as ‘Peasant’s Poet’ and a Ploughman Poet.
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