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A Q&A with the editors of Refocus: The Films of Jane Campion
Read moreby Alexia L. Bowler and Adele Jones Refocus: The Films of Jane Campion (2023) is the first collection of scholarly […]
Robert Burns’s Memory: A Matter of State
by Paul Malgrati Every year, on 25 January, Burns Night offers a remarkable opportunity for Scottish political parties to issue a statement about the Scottish nation, its identity, and its situation. Last year, in 2022, Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon,…
Stands Scottish Literature Where It Did? Revisiting Devolution
It’s been fifteen years since the last fat volume of essays on contemporary Scottish writing. Only a blink of historical time, but it’s been quite an eventful period. When the chapters of Berthold Schoene’s brilliant Edinburgh Companion to Contemporary Scottish Literature were being written, both the country and its debates looked rather different.
Walter Scott’s Seven Deadly Tales
by Daniel Cook Still revered as one of the world’s great historical novelists, Sir Walter Scott kept coming back to the supernatural, the eerie, and the macabre. Some of the novels even include extractable tales of terror: ‘The Fortunes of…
Burns Chronicle: The Oldest Scottish Literature Journal in the World?
By the Editors & Reviews Editor, the Burns Chronicle Almost 130 years ago, in 1892, enthusiasts started publishing the Burns Chronicle and the journal has continued ever since, conveying articles of interest and news among Burns Clubs and admirers of…
‘Everything that wriggles’: The Muriel Spark Archives
By James Bailey ‘I am a hoarder of two things: documents and trusted friends’, wrote Spark in her 1992 autobiography, Curriculum Vitae. ‘The former outweigh the latter in terms of quantity’, she added. Spark wasn’t exaggerating; while the author was…
Flawed Crystals: Muriel Spark’s Ways of Seeing
‘How do you do it? I am dazzled’, enthused Evelyn Waugh in a letter to Muriel Spark in 1960. Spark’s latest novel, The Bachelors, was hot off the press, and this, Waugh told her, was ‘the cleverest and most elegant…
Dialectics of Improvement: a conversation
Gerard Lee McKeever’s new book Dialectics of Improvement: Scottish Romanticism, 1786-1831 is published this month in the ‘Edinburgh Critical Studies in Romanticism’ series. To mark the occasion, Dr McKeever spoke to series co-editor Professor Penny Fielding.
Robert Louis Stevenson and Character Creation
Audrey Murfin explores Robert Louis Stevenson and his methods of Character Creation
Enlightenment in a Smart City: Edinburgh’s Civic Development, 1660-1750
By Murray Pittock My book is a study of the Enlightenment in Edinburgh like no other. Using data and models provided by urban innovation and Smart City theory, it pinpoints the distinctive features that made Enlightenment in the Scottish capital possible.…