The Golden Bough is a wide-ranging, comparative study of mythology and religion, written by the Scottish anthropologist Sir James George Frazer. The book documents and details the similarities among magical and religious beliefs around the globe. Frazer attempted to define the shared elements of religious belief and scientific thought, discussing fertility rites, human sacrifice, the dying god, the scapegoat, and many other symbols and practices whose influences had extended into 20th-century...
Edited and introduced by Andrew Lownie. ‘The short story is the real form’ John Buchan This is the first ever complete collection of all Buchan’s shorter Scottish fiction. Set largely in his beloved Borders, these stories and novellas show the full range and depth of Buchan’s writing. Featuring shepherds, poachers, gamekeepers and drovers, they are worlds away from the tales of aristocratic adventure with which he is so often associated. Shot through with characters and places he returned...
Introduced by Christopher Harvie. Set against the religious struggles of seventeenth-century Scotland, with Montrose for the king against a convenanted kirk, John Buchan’s Witch Wood is a gripping atmospheric tale in the spirit of Stevenson and Neil Munro. As a moderate Presbyterian minister, young David Sempill disputes with the extremists of his faith. All around, the defeated remnants of Montrose’s men are being harried and slaughtered by the faithful, and Sempill’s plea for compassion,...
Introduced by John Burns. This is the world of universal future war. Faced with the threat of bombs, bacteriological warfare and poison gas, a married couple whose pacifism compels them to opt out of ‘civilisation’, take to the hills to live as fugitives in the wild. Plainly and simply told, Wild Harbour charts the practical difficulties, the successes and failures of living rough in the beautiful hills of remote Speyside. In this respect the book belongs to a tradition of Scottish fiction...
This collection of the best of Iain Crichton Smith's short fiction brings together not one but many voices, both public and private. Ranging from inner promptings towards self-discovery, through the unconscious comedy of everyday speech, to the rantings of near madness, these stories display the peaks of Smith's wry, surrealistic humour, and his confessional mode in re-telling the past. The longer stories, illustrative of Smith's novels, are represented by 'Murdo' and...
Introduced by Douglas Gifford. This hilarious novel charts the rise and fall (and perhaps the rise again) of Magnus Merriman—would-be lover, writer, politician, idealist and crofter—moved by dreams of greatness and a talent for farcical defeat. Convinced that ‘small nations are safer to live in than big ones’, Magnus becomes a Nationalist candidate for the parliamentary seat of ‘Kinluce’. With details based on Linklater’s own experiences in an East Fife by-election in 1933, the way is...
Edited and introductions by Roderick Watson. The Quarry Wood, although published well before Sunset Song, inhabits a similar world; the progress of its heroine could almost be the alternative story of a Chris Guthrie who did go to university. Compassionate and humorous, the grace and style of Shepherd’s prose is heightened by a superb ear for the vigorous language of the north-east. The Weatherhouse, Shepherd’s masterpiece, is an even more substantial achievement which belongs to the great...
Introduced by Edwin Morgan. A ‘gowk storm’ is an untimely fall of snow in early Spring – a fitting symbol for the anguished story that unfolds. Nearly a hundred years ago, three girls were born to a minister and his wife in a remote Highland manse; the rigid patriarchal structure of the times is set against their approaching womanhood and growing awareness of life beyond the safety of home. After the disposal by marriage of the eldest, the sisters’ lives reach a new level of intensity....
Born in Jedburgh in 1780, Mary Fairfax was the daughter of one of Nelson's captains, and in common with most girls of her time and station she was given the kind of education which prizes gentility over ability. Nevertheless, she taught herself algebra in secret, and made her reputation in celestial mechanics with her 1831 translation of Laplace's Mécanique céleste as The Mechanism of the Heavens. As she was equally interested in art, literature and nature Somerville's lively...
Distinguished by irony, compassion and the author's own dry wit, these three novels paint a memorable picture of life in the streets, schools and tenements of Glasgow in the 1950s and 60s. With a unique vision of loneliness, old age, sexual longing, hot young blood and youth's casual cruelty, George Friel's books explore a dark comedy of tangled communication, human need and fading community. All these elements come together in the humorous parable of greed, religion and slum...