J. Walter McGinty received his PhD at the University of Strathclyde on ‘Literary, Philosophical and Theological Influences on Robert Burns’. Dr McGinty is an ordained Minister, having trained for the Ministry of the Church of Scotland at the University of Glasgow and Trinity College Glasgow. Other publications are Robert Burns and Religion, (Ashgate); and Robert Burns the Book Lover: From Reader to Writer, (Humming Earth.) The present volume completes the trilogy of books that have examined the influence of the reading of Robert Burns. McGinty has also written a biography, ‘An Animated Son of Liberty’: A Life of John Witherspoon, (Arena) and has published papers on ‘John Goldie and Robert Burns’ and ‘Milton’s Satan and Burns’s Auld Nick’ in Studies in Scottish Literature Vols XXIX and XXXIII.