William Allan Neilson (1869-1946) was a Scottish- American educator, writer and lexicographer, born in Doune, Scotland. He taught at Bryn Mawr College from 1898 to 1900, Harvard from 1900 to 1904, Columbia from 1904 to 1906, and Harvard again from 1906 to 1917. He was president of Smith College between 1917 and 1939. He wrote on poetry and William Shakespeare and was the editor of Webster's New International Dictionary, Second Edition (1934). Other works include: Origins and Sources of the Court of Love (1899), The Chief Elizabethan Dramatists, Excluding Shakespeare (1911), The Facts About Shakespeare (1913/1931) and Robert Burns: How to Know Him (1917). Robert Burns (1759-1796) (also known as Rabbie Burns, Scotland's favourite son, the Ploughman Poet, the Bard of Ayrshire and in Scotland as simply The Bard) was a poet and a lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland, and is celebrated worldwide. He is the best-known of the poets who have written in the Scots language, although much of his writing is also in English and a 'light' Scots dialect, accessible to an audience beyond Scotland. He also wrote in standard English, and in these pieces, his political or civil commentary is often at its most blunt. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.