The study of Scottish history and literature have been fully developed in universities only since the 1950s as such subjects were formerly considered part of the broader English literary scene and not given sufficient academic status to justify studying them separately. The foundation in 1951 of the School of Scottish Studies at Edinburgh University began to change this with the establishment, in many academic institutions, of courses specifically on Scottish history and literature, resulting in the renaissance in the study of the subject. For the reviewer, a Scot, it is such a pleasure to see an increasing amount of research and number of publications on this subject.
This welcome volume is one of the new Edinburgh Companions to Scottish Literature series, which includes contemporary Scottish poetry and the famous poet Robert Burns. It concentrates on twentieth century and early twenty‐first century authors, including Lewis Grassic Gibbon (Scots Quair), Muriel Spark, Hugh MacDiarmid, Douglas Dunn and Liz Lochhead. The book is thematically arranged, for example “Literature and World War One” by Trevor Royle and “Poetry in the age of Morgan” by Donny O'Rourke. It is also interspersed with chronological chapters entitled Arcades, which are essential for telling the history of the subject for those not familiar with it. The editors claim that the book's “innovative thematic structure ensures that the most important texts or authors are seen from different perspectives whether in the context of empire, renaissance, war and post‐ward, literary genre and language”. In the introduction they explain further that the volume “takes as a given that Scottish literature expresses itself in several languages, arises from several communities, has different canonical structures from the ‘Great Tradition’ of English literature and includes diasporic Scots”.
Written by experts in the field including Professors John Corbett, Douglas Gifford, Alan Riach and the reviewer's cousin, the book covers the Scottish literary renaissance from the start of the twentieth century up to the present day and briefly into this century. The main chapters cover poetry, fiction and drama in all three languages namely English, Scots and Gaelic with the Arcades chapters setting the context for the main essays.
The endnotes at the end of the book arranged by chapter would be more useful if they appeared at the end of the actual chapter, as readers tend not to flick back and forth. Also with the availability of specialist software for example Refworks and Endnote, all references can easily appear at the foot of the appropriate page.
The Companion includes seven pages of selected further reading, including standard general works on Scottish literature such as Literature of Scotland (Watson, 2007) and specific authors such as Norman MacCaig, George Mackay Brown and Jackie Kay, all of which are useful for those coming new to the subject. If the pagination of the books had been included, the list of titles would be more effective, as readers would then have an idea of how substantial the texts were. The ten‐page index contains authors and some novel titles in italics.
This volume adds great value to the existing more general material such as Contemporary Scottish Literature (McGuire, 2009) and The Edinburgh Companion to Contemporary Scottish Literature (Schoene‐Harwood, 2008) (RR 2008/168). The three‐volume Edinburgh History of Scottish Literature, with its same general editor Ian Brown (Brown, 2007), covers the whole of Scottish literature from Columbia to the modern day. This latter updates the classic four‐volume History of Scottish Literature (Craig, 1987‐1988). Additional further reading for students and staff is the Annual Bibliography of Scottish Literature published from 1969 onwards.
Priced in paperback at over £20.00 this would not be a “must have” buy for students of Scottish literature, but would make an affordable and essential purchase for academic libraries whose institutions include the subject in their curricula.
