Gillies was an impecunious editor, minor poet and translator who lived in Edinburgh 1788 - 1858. These 270 letters were mostly written to Gilliess friend and literary father-confessor Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges, but there are also many to David Steuart Erskine, 11th Earl of Buchan, discussing many of the great men and important books of the day. The letters are mostly highly informed literary gossip with much to interest scholars of the circle of Scott and Ballantyne, Hogg, Galt, de Quincey, Southey, Wordsworth and Coleridge
