Novel

The Man of Feeling

by Henry Mackenzie

Henry Mackenzie’s novel of 1771 follows Harley, a young man so tender-hearted that he weeps at most of what he meets, and it made its readers weep too. Burns called it a book he prized next to the Bible. Mackenzie, an Edinburgh lawyer, returned the compliment in 1786 with one of the first and warmest reviews of the Kilmarnock poems, calling their author a Heaven-taught ploughman.

The librarian

Read it in the Library After Dark Or read it as plain text

Reading time

About 2 hr 30 min

Where to find it

The Burns Room

Edition

Project Gutenberg, eBook #5083. In the public domain in the United States.