Events are taking place across Scotland to celebrate the birthday of Robert Burns.
Traditional Burns Suppers, poetry recitals and performances will take place 254 years on from the birth of the poet.
A recently discovered letter written by Burns to actress Elizabeth Kemble in 1794 is to be published for the first time to mark the day.
Found by researchers working on a Heritage Lottery project to introduce the Burns to schoolchildren, it has been authenticated forensically and approved by an international expert. Kemble was from an acting family and shared Burns' support of the abolition of slavery.
The letter asks Ms Kemble to protect a Burns manuscript, which researchers said was a further collection of his letters to his friend Robert Riddell on anti-slavery. It reads: "All I have to ask of you is, lay the book under lock & key, when you go out, as you will easily believe that I do not wish to expose such a thing to the random perusal of Chance."
The letter will be published in a new book, Enlightened Burns. Project director Helena Anderson Wright said: "It is quite remarkable that, over 200 years after Burns' death, a find like this is still possible.
"Now that we have had it authenticated, we are delighted to share this letter with the world. There is still a mystery surrounding its complete interpretation which will no doubt be hotly debated by academics for years to come."
The original parish register recording the birth of the poet will also be put on display as part of the celebrations.
The rarely-seen record documents Burns as the eldest child of William Burnes, a gardener and tenant farmer from Kincardineshire, and his wife, Agnes Brown, of Maybole, Ayrshire, and will be displayed in General Register House in Edinburgh until February 14.
As well as traditional Burns Suppers in Alloway, the Balmoral Hotel and homes across Scotland, new arrangements of the poet's most famous work will be performed by traditional folk musicians and international performers at the Celtic Connections festival in Glasgow, while more than 2,000 performers will "light up" venues across Dumfries as the area hosts the 2013 Big Burns Supper over three nights.
