Allan Ramsay was a Scottish playwright, publisher, librarian, and impresario who lived in early Enlightenment Edinburgh. His works include the pastoral drama The Gentle Shepherd (1725).

Ramsay probably attended the parish school at Crawfordjohn. He at the age of 16 years in 1700 apprenticed as a wig maker in Edinburgh and later set up his own wig-making business. Always a voracious reader, he began composing verses and in 1712 he was one of the founders of the Easy Club, a group of like-minded men who enjoyed literary discussions over a bottle of claret.

He is best known for his Tea-Table Miscellany (1724 - 1737), a highly regarded and influential collection of Scottish song, The Ever Green (1724), which brought work by the medieval Makars together with that of poets of the seventeenth century, and The Gentle Shepherd (1725), a ballad opera and a hymn to the joys of pastoral life. As a compiler and editor of Scottish lyrics and verse, he played an important part in preserving Scottish work, bridging the ages and inspiring other ballad collectors, such as Sir Walter Scott.