Association for Scottish Literary Studies - Böcker

The House with the Green Shutters is a dark, provocative novel, shining a harsh and unforgiving light into the inner recesses of small-town Scotland at the turn of the last century. Written as a response to social change, and as an antidote to the...

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James Hogg's most famous novel is an unforgettable tale of mystery, murder, religious fanaticism, folklore, horror, and fantasy. Strikingly modern in style and tone, the intricate structure and eerie atmosphere of The Private Memoirs and Confessio...

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George Mackay Brown's sparkling, fable-like novel Greenvoe depicts the sudden, destructive intrusion of brute modernity into a tight-knit and unchanging community, as witnessed by an eclectic host of local characters. Alan MacGillivray's SCOTNOTE ...

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Muriel Spark's arch, subversive novel entertains us with its amusing, nostalgic evocation of the 1930s schooldays of a group of middle-class Edinburgh girls - then forces us to face up to the easy surface charms, and darker undercurrents, of Miss ...

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Iain Crichton Smith was one of the foremost poets of the 20th century, writing in English and Gaelic. His poetry often concerns itself with unsentimental views of life in the Western Highlands and Islands, and his dislike of, and opposition to, do...

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Robert Burns is perhaps Scotland's foremost cultural icon, and is the world's most widely celebrated poet. Sometimes his fame - and his face on all those teatowels - stands in the way of an appreciation of the sheer scope of his genius. Although o...

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Robin Jenkins's greatest novel is a powerful examination of good and evil, set against the backdrop of a Scottish estate during World War II. With its themes of class-conflict, war, evil and envy, this is a towering work of fiction that remai...

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Robert Henryson, along with his contemporary William Dunbar, is one of the most significant figures of medieval Scottish literature and is a distinctive voice in the fifteenth-century Northern Renaissance. His subtle use of language and careful ba...

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Along with his contemporary Robert Henryson, William Dunbar is the foremost figure of Scottish medieval literature. Writing as a court poet during the reign of James IV, Dunbar was at the intellectual heart of Scotland's Renaissance. His poetry is...

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John Buchan was a prolific author, and can be fairly called the father of the modern thriller genre. Enduringly popular, many of his books have never been out of print: and yet serious critics have had little to say about him, although contemporar...

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William McIlvanney's fiction is drawn from the lives and circumstances of the people of the West of Scotland, and is characterised by detailed observation, an accurate ear for language, wit and thoughtful reflection on living and working condition...

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William Dunbar (c.1460-1520) bridges the divide between medieval bard and Renaissance poet. From the sonorous beat of the Lament for the Makaris to the subtle satire of "The Tretis of the Tua Mariit Wemen and the Wedo", his self-knowledg...

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Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off is the best-known and most critically acclaimed of Liz Lochhead's plays. Dramatising the religious and political history of Scotland from a particularly female point of view, it remains popular with aud...

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Hugh MacDiarmid (born Christopher Murray Grieve) is a huge, and still controversial, figure in modern Scottish literature. Called variously "the most important figure in Scottish life in the twentieth century" and "a symbol of all t...

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Born in the last years of James III's reign, Sir David Lyndsay (c.1486-1555) served under James IV, James V, and Mary. As a writer, Lyndsay is best known today for his play, "Ane Satyre of The Thrie Estaitis", a biting and comic commenta...

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Iain Banks is one of the most inventive writers in the UK today, producing an extraordinary range of work, from family sagas set in present-day Scotland to science fiction spanning vast gulfs of space and time. He enjoys breaking the arbitrary bou...

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LEWIS GRASSIC GIBBON (1901-1935) is one of the best known of early twentieth-century Scottish writers. Born James Leslie Mitchell, he grew up in the Mearns area of north-east Scotland, a landscape and farming life he recreated vividly in Sunset So...

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What made the twentieth-century interwar literary renaissance unique among Scottish cultural movements was the belief of those involved that any regeneration of the nation's artistic culture could not be separated from revival in its social, econo...

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Naomi Mitchison was one of the most prolific, skilled and original writers of the twentieth century, whose novels range in setting from prehistory to outer space. Her work displays a breadth of knowledge and a sympathetic understanding for humanit...

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Edwin Morgan is one of Scotland's most distinguished poets. Born in Glasgow in 1920, he served in the Second World War as a medical orderly and lectured in English Literature at Glasgow University until his retirement as a Professor in 1980. Since...

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"Serving Twa Maisters" brings together five plays in Scots translation: "Let Wives Tak Tent" (Robert Kemp's version of Moliere's "L'Ecole des Femmes"); "The Burdies" (Douglas Young's version of Aristophanes'...

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The ballad is rooted deeply in Scottish popular culture; dramatic in nature, they often centre on moments of intense conflict and are marked by violence, ranging over themes such as vengeance, murder, supernatural encounters, and treachery in love...

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Matthew Fitt's extraordinary science-fiction novel But n Ben A-Go-Go is a fast-paced cyberpunk thriller. Like many SF novels it is a conscious comment on contemporary life; with its groundbreaking use of the Scots language, it challenges orthodoxi...

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Edwin Morgan is one of Scotland's most distinguished and popular poets. His celebration of his native city brought him the honour of Glasgow Poet Laureate, and in 2004 the Scottish Executive recognised him officially, as Scotland's first modern na...

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James Bridie was one of the most influential British dramatists of the 20th century. This new collection includes "The Sunlight Sonata", "A Sleeping Clergyman", "Mr Bolfry", and "Daphne Laureola", along with...

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Robert Louis Stevenson is one of the most important and influential writers of the modern era, admired and emulated by authors across the world from the 19th century to the present day. He also wrote some of the most original stories, creating ico...

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Growing out of roots planted in the Great Depression and the chaos of the Second World War, Glasgow Unity Theatre grew into the most celebrated and influential of mid-twentieth century Scottish theatre companies, successfully developing the theatr...

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Neil Munro, although best known today for his humourous Para Handy stories, wrote several very fine historical novels exploring, and critiquing, Highland life and culture. Ronald Renton's SCOTNOTE study guide examines two major works by Munro: Joh...

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Professor Douglas Gifford, Emeritus Professor of Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow, explores James Hogg's most famous work, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. This shocking tale of a minister's son who believ...

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'Thrawn Janet' (1881) and 'Markheim' (1885) have the diabolical as their theme, and their sinister settings and atmospheres are expertly created. 'Thrawn Janet', set somewhere in the Scottish Borders at the beginning of the eighteenth century, is ...

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