The publication of Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect at Kilmarnock in Ayrshire on 31 July 1786 marks the official unveiling of the work of a man who was to become a cultural phenomenon in terms that are worldwide. Prior to his first book, Robert Burns had already achieved regional celebrity status during 1785 as a poet with a brace of satires (‘The Holy Fair’ and ‘Holy Willie's Prayer’) on the predominant Calvinist religion of his locality. The manuscript circulation of these and other pieces, most notably a series of verse epistles written during 1784–5, marks the poet out as part of the satellite Ayrshire Enlightenment, taking its cue from the metropolitan Scottish versions of this milieu in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen. An independent tenant-farmer at Mossgiel in Mauchline, Ayrshire, since 1783, Burns was also from 1781 a Freemason and an intimate acquaintance of many of the professional class (including lawyers, merchants and teachers) around the county town of Ayr, and it was in such circles that Burns's poetic iconoclasm and urbanity were first enjoyed.

The publication of the ‘Kilmarnock edition’, as Burns's first book became known, was supported by 612 advance subscriptions, though these were concentrated, principally, on fewer than a dozen individuals (for instance, Burns's friend the lawyer Robert Aiken took out 145 of these on behalf of many other likeminded admirers whom he knew to constitute a ready-made market). The book was a venture born out of financial necessity. Burns's farm, which he worked principally with his younger brother Gilbert, was barely profitable, and he was at this time talking to friends, whether seriously or not, of leaving for the West Indies, where he would find employment as a manager among the slave plantations. It may be, however, that Burns's projected emigration represented only proud posturing, since he was a highly strung man during 1786. From March to July of that year, James Armour, father of Jean, who was eventually to become Burns's wife in 1788, strenuously attempted to prevent his daughter from having anything to do with the poet, broadcasting widely in the vicinity his view of the opprobrious nature of Burns, and going so far as to have a lawyer physically remove the names of the couple from an irregular but binding marriage contract they had made between them.