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Scottish Authors

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Scottish Writers

The Association for Scottish Literary Studies aims to promote the study, teaching and writing of Scottish literature, and to further the study of the languages of Scotland.

New Scottish Writing provides a list of authors that represents Scotland's thriving and vibrant literary culture.  The titles listed for each author introduce you to some of the best-known and most recent titles from what comprises a massive body of Scottish writing.

The Scottish Association of Writers (S.A.W.):  originated in 1969 through the good work of the Greenock Writers' Club who began the development of the concept.  The constitution states that the object of the Association shall be to promote Weekend Schools for members and to encourage participation in competitions and to form a liaison with purchasers of members' work.

Scottish Writers:  Browse the list to learn about the Scottish writer of your choice. Each has a biography, a review of their major works, and a reading list.  You can also offer your own opinions of featured works in the User Reviews section.

The Angus Council's website has a page on Angus Authors which provides brief biographical sketches of authors from Angus.

The Society of Authors in Scotland:  is a non-profit making organisation, founded in 1884, 'to protect the rights and further the interests of authors'.  The Society now has over 8,000 members.  The first president was Lord Tennyson, and a great many prominent writers, including Shaw, Galsworthy, Hardy, Wells, Barrie, Masefield, Forster, A. P. Herbert, and countless contemporary writers, have assisted in its activities and campaigns.

The Association for Scottish Literary Studies aims to promote the study, teaching and writing of Scottish literature, and to further the study of the languages of Scotland.  Their Web site has articles, papers, essays, and school materials (study guides, etc.).  There are several papers from a conference 1000 Years of Scottish Literature.

Sir James M. Barrie

See article and links at Sir James M. Barrie

Dorothy Dunnett

Dorothy Dunnett was best known for her two superb series of historical fiction - The Lymond Chronicles, and The House of Niccolo - set in the 15th and 16th centuries and ranging all over Europe and the Mediterranean while being anchored in Scotland, and for King Hereafter, the 11th century story of Earl Thorfinn of Orkney whom Dorothy believed was also King Macbeth.  She was also a portrait painter and sculptress, as well as being involved in many aspects of Scottish public life and business alongside her husband Alastair.  This website gives details of her life and work and is intended to provide a focus for the many readers who continue to avidly read and discuss her books and have made friends worldwide because of them.  This Web site also has a biography of her.

Sorley MacLean (Somhairle MacGill-Eain) - Poet (1911-1996)

Articles commemorating the passing of Sorley MacLean were a "Feature of the week" on The Capital Scot and may be found at Sorley MacLean - an Obituary.  This is an excerpt from that obituary.

• "Sorley MacLean is undisputedly one of the greatest writers in Gaelic, and his death in 1998 occasioned a tremendous outpouring of tributes honouring his contribution to Gaelic culture.  He was highly respected as a thinker and commentator on matters social, political and literary.  His Gaelic writing, particularly the gift of his poems, has been a crucial element in the remarkable renaissance of the Gaelic language, spoken and written, not only in Scotland but in the Gaelic speaking areas of Canada and North America."
   
• According to the Clan MacLean in a Tribute to Sorley Maclean, "Many themes can be found in Sorley's poetry.  He was a war poet, a political poet, a socialist poet, a Celtic poet and most of all a great love poet.  All of his poems are love poems to the Gaelic language and its music - his 'fair, golden one'.  It pained MacLean to think that a time would come when no one would understand even a line of a Gaelic song and his poems speak of his fair love with the maimed body who was dying - the songs and poetic tradition of his language.
     "Sorley MacLean has been called the father of the Gaelic Renaissance.  His poetry took an ancient, dying language and showed the world what a powerful medium it was for expressing very contemporary thoughts and emotions.  He gave Gaelic a 20th century voice, a voice which was anything but docile.  It blazed with passion and raged with anger against the injustice to the Gaels: the Clearances; betrayal by those in power for the sake of their own greed; the contempt the civilized world held for the natural world and its indigenous people.  He saw the Gaidhealtachd as a microcosm for the problems, cruelties and injustices of today's world.  The famine of Ireland spoke of Biafra and Rwanda, The Highland Clearances of the homeless of Edinburgh and Los Angeles.  He made his point to us and did it in one of the oldest languages in Europe."
   
• MacLean was a great love poet (who had wished to go to Spain but was unable to do so for family reasons), a great political poet and also a great war poet.  He served in the African Desert during the Second World War and was wounded three times, the last time severely.  He saw fascism not only in Spain, not only in Nazism, but probably also in the Highlands at the time of the Clearances.  Possibly his best- known and perhaps his greatest single poem is Hallaig, which is about a cleared village and which has a strange, eerie picture of the dead haunting a place and walking there.   MacLean was also a scholar of the Highlands and had a tremendous interest in Highland genealogy.
   

Robert McLellan

Robert McLellan was born on the 28th of January 1907, at his grandparents' farm, Linmill, in Kirkfieldband, Lanarkshire, and it was boyhood holidays here which inspired his Linmill Stories (collected 1977) and exerted a lifelong influence on all his work.  After an education at Bearsden Academy and Glasgow University, McLellan dedicated himself to writing in Scots, the living language of the communities he grew up in.

Robert McLellan's career began with a one-act play, Jeddart Justice in 1934 was the first (and perhaps the best) of a new breed of playwrights writing in Scots. His first play was followed by a fulllength play, Toom Byres, which was produced in Glasgow in 1936.  Other full-length plays were Jamie the Saxt (1937), Torwatletie (1946), and The Flouers o' Edinburgh (1948), which explores the language problem in Scotland in the 18th century.  All these plays were mock-historical comedies which facilitated the use of a standard non-localised Scots which transcended the erosion of the language which had taken place in the current century. This language sounded familiar to Scottish people and was comprehensible wherever the plays were performed.  These plays were well-crafted, and prominent roles were often splendidly acted by Duncan Macrae.  (from an article on Electric Scotland [Adobe Acrobat])

According to the McLellan Festival organization, Robert Mclellan is a seminal influence in Scottish culture yet very neglected, and without him we would not have writing in living Scots at all today - writers like Irvine Welsh, Liz Lochead, John Byrne, and others.  The year 2007 marked the centenary of his birth, and there was (September 2007) a special celebration on the Isle of Arran where he lived and worked for forty years in the little clachan of High Corrie.

The Electric Scotland cited above and the following sites are informative in different ways as they give different perspectives of Robert Mclellan, albeit without very much detail.
    Scottish Libraries across the Internet Robert Mclellan
    University of Glasgow, Department of Scottish Literature, The Association for Scottish Literary Studies

Sir Walter Scott

Sir Walter Scott - Novelist.  "Scott's work shows the influence of the 18th century enlightenment.  He believed every human was basically decent regardless of class, religion, politics, or ancestry.  Tolerance is a major theme in his historical works.  The Waverley Novels express his belief in the need for social progress that does not reject the traditions of the past.  He was the first novelist to portray peasant characters sympathetically and realistically, and was equally just to merchants, soldiers, and even kings."

Sir Walter Scott - 1st Baronet.  An article in the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Selected Poetry of Sir Walter Scott.  (Prepared by members of the Department of English at the University of Toronto)

The Life Of Sir Walter Scott - Part I, by S. Fowler Wright, published by The Poetry League - "A life of Walter Scott requires no apology.  He is by far the greatest figure in Scottish literature, and has only one rival in the English tongue."

See the Walter Scott Digital Archive of the University of Edinburgh for an "online resource created in the Special Collections Division.  It is designed around the extensive Corson Collection of Walter Scott material held in Special Collections.  We hope that in time this website will become the main source of information on the life and work of Sir Walter Scott on the web."  Link to The Capital Scot at Longer Poems Available as E-Texts

Adam Smith

"Scotland's finest export, contrary to the stereotypes, is neither kilts nor cashmere sweaters.  Golf and whiskey, loved almost equally around the world, may make the short list, but also aren't the nation's most memorable sellers.  Lovely, buttery shortbread (wrapped in tartan packaging, of course) may be emblematic of the cloudy country for many, but it, too, is not Scotland's greatest gift to the globe.

"Wonderful though all these may be, Scotland's shining export is an idea.  That concept, put forward more than 200 years ago and outlined in a treatise called The Wealth of Nations, is Adam Smith's vision of capitalism.  As if led by an "invisible hand," Smith said, everyone working in his or her own interest will create what is best for all."  [Quoted from TheStreet.com at http://www.thestreet.com/int/euromarkets/759967.html.]

Adam Smith is the most well-known expositor of capitalism of all time.  He was born in Kirkcaldy, Scotland, a small coastal town near Edinburgh.  Smith was educated at Glasgow University and Ballioll College in Oxford, England.  Later he lectured at Edinburgh and became a professor at Glasgow University.  After a time, Smith went to France to tutor the Duke of Buccleugh and met Quesmay, Turgot, and Voltaire.  While in France, Smith began to write The Wealth of Nations and continued writing it upon his return to Scotland.  This influential work was published in 1776.  In 1778 he followed in the footsteps of his father as a customs official.  He died in Edinburgh.

Nigel Tranter

See Scotland's Storyteller at http://www.nigeltranter.co.uk/ - The Nigel Tranter Web Site.  "From 1935 to 2000 Nigel Tranter wrote over 140 books including his famous Scottish historical Novels,factual books about Scotland and the Scots, novels set in Scotland, and other countries, westerns, under a pseudonym, and a series of books for children.  When he died on the 9th of January 2000, aged 90 years, many of his loyal readers wanted to create a memorial to encapsulate the love and respect that people have for him and his work.  Hopefully these pages go some way to meeting these requirements and, in them, you will find details of the man, the most complete timeline of his literary work on the internet and the Tranter Mailing List which is, daily,linking over 70 enthusiasts worldwide."

See a Focus on Nigel Tranter at http://www.his.com/~rory/tranter.html.  "Nigel Tranter not only published more books than any other Scot but no one even comes close to having as many books currently in print, certainly the acid test of popularity.  Among the reasons for his prolificacy is the fact that, even though he lived into his 90th year he did his writing"on-the-hoof",as he called it -- while walking daily by the shore of Aberlady Bay on the Firth of Forth near his home at Gullane some eighteen miles east of Edinburgh.  He lead a very active life right to the end even though he had moved to a modern house with gas hyeat rather than having to chop wood to heat the 17th century Quarry House where he lived for the previous fifty years. "

Selections

You may select a general topic from the list below to view both information on those topics and links to related sites.

Select a topic here.
Archaeology in Scotland
Scottish Authors
Castles in Scotland
Scottish Cooking
Franco-Scottish Sites
Germano-Scottish Sites
Heraldry
Scottish Magazines On-Line
Scottish & Celtic Newsgroups
Miscellaneous "Scottish Stuff"
Radio-TV
Scottish Newspapers On-Line
Tartan & The Kilt
Robert the Bruce
Scottish Serendipity
Technology in Scotland
Web Cameras in Scotland

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