Allan Ramsay Monument

The statue of Allan Ramsay stands in West Princes Street Gardens, below the castle — a white Carrara marble figure of the eighteenth-century poet, wig and all, carved by Sir John Steell and unveiled in 1865. Ramsay was the poet and bookseller who opened Britain's first circulating library in Edinburgh and helped spark the revival of Scots-language verse that Robert Burns would later carry forward. He looks out over the gardens from a quiet corner most visitors pass without a glance.

Photographed in May 2023 during a trip through Scotland. Edinburgh is a city dense with monuments to its writers — it was the world's first UNESCO City of Literature — and Ramsay, half-forgotten now, is one of the figures the whole tradition rests on.