International Companions to Scottish Literature – serie

James Macpherson’s “Poems of Ossian”, first published from 1760 as Fragments of Ancient Poetry, were the literary sensation of the age. Attacked by Samuel Johnson and others as “forgeries”, nonetheless the poems enthralled readers around the world, attracting rapturous admiration from figures as diverse as Goethe, Diderot, Jefferson, Bonaparte and Mendelssohn. This International Companion examines the social, political and philosophical context of the poems, their disputed origins, their impact on world literature, and the various critical afterlives of Macpherson and of his literary works.

John Galt (1779–1839) was a contemporary of Sir Walter Scott and Jane Austen, and a friend and biographer of Lord Byron. Although a prolific writer, and much admired in his own lifetime, Galt has never achieved comparable levels of literary fame, and his works – poised between Enlightenment and Romanticism – are now often overlooked. Yet his reputation has been slowly growing, and he has attracted critical interest as both a political novelist and a chronicler of Scottish life. This International Companion builds on a steady stream of recent scholarship, and examines Galt’s writings in the social, economic, and religious contexts of their time.

The period from 1650 to 1800 encompasses the Restoration, the 1688 Revolution, the failure of the Company of Scotland's Darien colony, the 1707 Acts of Union, the Jacobite Risings of 1715 and 1745, and the emergence of the new British Empire as a global superpower. It also witnessed religious, economic, and social upheavals, the beginnings of industrialisation, and the start of the Clearances, as well as the astonishing efflorescence of intellectual activity known as the Scottish Enlightenment. This International Companion offers new perspectives on how the long eighteenth century transformed Scotland's literary cultures - both high and low, dominant and marginalised - in English, Gaelic, Latin, and Scots.

The nineteenth century has been regarded as an era of decline for Scottish literature. This INTERNATIONAL COMPANION shows that it was instead a transformational period. Through a lively and extensive publishing community, widely varied Scottish writers found expression. New voices and genres flourished. Alongside cultural giants such as Scott and Stevenson, women, working-class, immigrant, and emigrant authors - writing in English, Gaelic, and Scots - propelled Scotland onto the international literary stage. From Shetland to Tasmania, from Celtic Twilight to science fiction, this volume explores the many modes of Scottish expression that emerged from this complex and fertile age.