<b>The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg</b>&nbsp;is a&nbsp;novel&nbsp;by the Scottish author&nbsp;James Hogg, published anonymously in 1824.<br />The plot concerns Robert Wringhim, a staunch&nbsp;Calvinist&nbsp;who believes he is&nbsp;guaranteed&nbsp;Salvation&nbsp;and justified in killing those he believes are already damned by God. The novel has been classified among many genres, including&nbsp;gothic novel,&nbsp;psychological mystery,&nbsp;metafiction,&nbsp;satire&nbsp;and the study of&nbsp;totalitarian thought; it can also be thought of as an early example of modern&nbsp;crime fiction&nbsp;in which the story is told, for the most part, from the point of view of its criminal&nbsp;anti-hero.<br /><br />The action of the novel is located in an historically definable Scotland with accurately observed settings, and simultaneously implies a pseudo-Christian world of angels, devils, and&nbsp;demonic possession. The narrative is set against the&nbsp;antinomian&nbsp;societal structure flourishing in the borders of Scotland in Hogg&#39;s day.<br /><br />The first edition sold very poorly and the novel suffered from a period of critical neglect, especially in the nineteenth century. However, since the latter part of the twentieth century it has won greater critical interest and attention. It was praised by&nbsp;Andr&eacute; Gide&nbsp;in an introduction to the 1947 reissue and described by the critic&nbsp;Walter Allen&nbsp;as &#39;the most convincing representation of the power of evil in our literature&#39;.<br /><br />It has also been seen as a study of&nbsp;religious fanaticism&nbsp;through its deeply critical portrait of the&nbsp;Calvinist&nbsp;concept of&nbsp;predestination. It is written in English, with some sections of&nbsp;Scots&nbsp;that appear in dialogue. The demonic character Gil-Martin may be a reference to the&nbsp;Gaelic&nbsp;word gille-M&agrave;rtainn (&quot;fox&quot;).