Christopher MacLachlan – författare

In 1878, Robert Louis Stevenson was suffering from poor health, struggling to survive on the income derived from his writings, and tormented by his infatuation with Fanny Osbourne, a married American woman. His response was to embark on a journey through the Cevennes with a donkey, Modestine, and a notebook, which he later transformed into Travels with a Donkey. Just a few months after publication, Stevenson was off again - this time crossing the Atlantic and the breadth of America in the hope of being re-united with Fanny, an experience he recorded in The Amateur Emigrant. Both pieces are classics of travel writings, which reveal as much about Stevenson's character as the landscape he travels through.

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 iconic characters who have moved beyond the page to become parts of the broader collective culture. Christopher MacLachlan's SCOTNOTE study guide examines three of Stevenson's most popular novels. Sometimes dismissed as 'merely' children's fiction, Treasure Island, and Kidnapped and its sequel Catriona, feature young protagonists who come of age through their adventures, and who discover that those they look to for help and guidance may be more fallible and unreliable than they had first thought. This guide is suitable for senior school pupils and students at all levels.

The eighteenth century was a time of dramatic change and drastic upheaval in Scotland, from the Treaty of Union with England in 1707, through Jacobite rebellions in the Highlands, to the Scottish Enlightenment. This was the century when Scottish writing exploded across the globe, from Hume and Smith, from Macpherson's Ossian, from Burns and from Scott, transforming world literature and culture. Crossing the Highland Line is a new collection of essays examining this crucial period, exploring the literary connections and influences across Scotland, and tracing the links between those who wrote in Scots and English and those who wrote in Gaelic.These essays, from fourteen leading scholars, show that the whole of Scotland - Highland and Lowland, high cultures and low - participated in the reshaping of literature in the eighteenth century. The Highland Line does not divide.

George MacDonald (1824 - 1905) is the acknowledged forefather of later fantasy writers such as C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien: however, his place in his own time is seldom examined. This omission does MacDonald a grave disservice. By ignoring a fundamental aspect of what made MacDonald the man he was, the critical habit of viewing MacDonald's work only in terms of his followers reinforces the long-entrenched assessment that it has a limited value - one only for religious enthusiasts and fantasy lovers. The essays in this anthology seek to correct that omission, by looking directly at MacDonald the Victorian - at his place in the Victorian literary scene, at his engagement with the works of his literary contemporaries and at his interest in the social, political, and theological movements of his age. The resulting portrait reveals a MacDonald who deserves a more prominent place in the rich literary history of the nineteenth century than he has hitherto been given.

The nineteenth century saw the romanticisation of the Highlander, the rise of tartanry and the emergence of the modern Scottish tourist industry. It also witnessed the worst excesses of the Clearances and the beginnings of an exodus from the Highlands to the industrial cities and to the colonies. The fourteen essays in this volume examine the literary culture of Scotland - Highland and Lowland - during this transformational period, and explore its interactions and intersections.