G. Ross Roy

George Ross Roy (20 April 1924 – 19 February 2013) was a Canadian scholar who specialized in Scottish literature, best known as editor of the long-standard edition of The Letters of Robert Burns, 2 vols.

[4] Ross Roy's early scholarship was in comparative literature, on the French reception of Walt Whitman, and his first books were on Canadian poetry.

The journal, he wrote, was to provide "a common meeting ground for work embracing all aspects of the great Scottish literary heritage.

It is not the organ of any school or faction; it welcomes all shades of opinion.... As a journal devoted to a vigorous living literature it will carry studies of contemporary authors.

"[10] He planned it as an international venture, recruiting for its first advisory board three major figures, the Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid, the veteran American scholar A.L.

Strout, and the German scholar Kurt Wittig, soon to be joined by the leading Scottish critic David Daiches.

[11] Following a spectacular double-volume in 2007, Roy, by then well over 80, announced that the journal would close down, but in 2012 he transferred rights to the University of South Carolina libraries for it to continue; in 2012, Studies in Scottish Literature restarted, adding an open-access digital version alongside print production, and by 2013 all back issues were also available online.