Ronald Black - Böcker

Samuel Johnson’s Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and James Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides are widely regarded as among the best pieces of travel writing ever produced. Johnson and Boswell spent the autumn of 1773 touring Scotland as far west as the islands of Skye, Raasay, Coll, Mull, Ulva, Inchkenneth and Iona. Highly readable, often profound, and at times very funny, their accounts of the ‘jaunt’ are above all a valuable record of a society undergoing rapid change.In this pioneering new edition, Ronald Black brings together the two men’s starkly contrasting accounts of each of the thirteen stages of the journey. He also restores to Boswell’s text 20,000 words from his journal which were denied entry to his book because they were intimate, defamatory, or about the islands rather than Johnson. The endnotes incorporate Boswell’s footnotes, translations of Latin passages, a clear summary of pre-existing information on the two texts, and a fresh focus on what the two men actually found on their trip. To the Hebrides also includes contemporary prints by Thomas Rowlandson, seventeen new maps and a comprehensive index.

An Lasair (The Flame) is a colorful new anthology of over sixty poems from one of the most dynamic periods of Gaelic literature. Arranged chronologically and edited with facing translations by Ronald Black, these poems, composed in a range of forms and styles, span the whole gamut of human experience, from politics, religion and war to love, sex and domestic life. Together they form a rich celebration of Gaelic culture and provide a fascinating insight into the passions and preoccupations of the Highland people during a turbulent period of their history.An Lasair features the work of over forty poets, and includes extensive notes and an introduction, which set the poems firmly in their literary and historical contexts.

John Gregorson Campbell (1834–91) was one of the most outstanding folklorists working in Scotland during the nineteenth century. Based on materials which he had gathered in the 1850s and 1860s, his Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland and Witchcraft and Second Sight in the Highlands and Islands were published posthumously in 1900 and 1902. Engagingly written in an anecdotal style, they introduce us to a galaxy of fairies, witches, ghosts and supernatural creatures, as well as general superstitions and the beliefs and rituals of the traditional calendar. Having been written as a single work, they are now reunited as one volume.In a lively introduction, Ronald Black illuminates Campbell’s work with extensive explanatory notes and a radically revised biography of the collector, supported by bibliography, maps and index.