The good ship Rosamond first appeared in an account of Burns's life in the spring of 1828, when Constable & Co. issued a Life of Robert Burns, by J. G. Lockhart, LL.B., as Volume XXIII of their Miscellany of Original and Selected Publications. Inevitably Lockhart had based his biography upon Dr. Currie's, which since its appearance in 1800 had run through many editions, and had carried Burns's fame to virtually all parts of the English-speaking world. But Lockhart, working under the eye of his distinguished father-in-law, was not content merely to rehash old material. Though modestly stating that his purpose was “no more than to compress, within the limits of a single small volume, the substance of materials already open to all the world,” he admitted that “little touches of novelty” might be discovered in his narrative, particularly in the chapters dealing with Burns's later years. Robert Chambers, whom Lockhart characterized as a “diligent local antiquary of Edinburgh, to whom I owe many obligations,” had passed on to the biographer whatever he had gleaned from conversation with Burns's surviving acquaintances; William M'Diarmid, editor of the Dumfries Courier, had supplied other “particulars”; Allan Cunningham, who shared with James Hogg the honor of Lockhart's dedication, was the authority for still more new matter; various unpublished journals and letters were also laid under contribution. The total result was a picture of Burns recognizably like Dr. Currie's, but tricked out with such a wealth of anecdotal novelty that the subscribers to Constable's Miscellany must have been well aware that here in truth was an “original” and not merely a “selected” publication. And in this original publication everything concerning the Rosamond was new.