Page 33 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Scotland
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A POR TR AIT OF SC O TLAND 31
of a Justified Sinner (1824).
Following Susan Ferrier and
John Galt, standards were
modest, des pite the prodigious
career of Margaret Oliphant.
Thomas Carlyle noted the
provinciality of Edinburgh in
the 1830s.
A later response to anxieties of
the age came from Robert Louis
Stevenson (1850–94) in Dr Jekyll
and Mr Hyde. This contrasted
with the senti mentality of home-
spun or so-called kailyard
(literally “cabbage patch”) fiction,
led by JM Barrie and SR Crockett.
Barrie’s dramas often catered for Arthur Conan Doyle’s sleuth, Sherlock Holmes, in The Graphic (1901)
bourgeois tastes, as did the
Sherlock Holmes stories of Arthur William Soutar. Fiction reached of Miss Jean Brodie, 1961). Urban
Conan Doyle (1859–1930), epic and inno vative realism devel oped quietly
which endure today. proportions with Neil Gunn before William MacIlvanney’s
(Butcher’s Broom, 1933) and break through with The Big
Lewis Grassic Gibbon (A Scots Man (1985).
Quair, 1932–4). Others Following Alasdair Gray’s
included Willa Muir, Nan bizarre Lanark (1981), a power-
Shepherd and Fionn MacColla. ful wave propelled fiction into
John Buchan attempted ser- the highly productive present,
i ous work and popular in which Iain Banks remains a
thrillers. Nationalist impetus best seller (The Crow Road, 1992).
was dis sipated by the rise of Tom Leonard’s poems initiated
fascism, and new directions a tradition using urban demotic
were sought after World War II. speech. James Kelman elevated
this to new levels with How Late
It Was, How Late (1994).
Post-1945
Irvine Welsh’s portrayal of
Sorley Maclean wrote in drug culture is world famous,
his native Gaelic of the ancient though the energy of Train
Highland culture’s plight. spotting (1993) is absent from its
Norman MacCaig began a successors. The private drama of
Poster for the film Rob Roy (1995), based career characterized by AL Kennedy’s stories is poignant
on Walter Scott’s 1817 novel metaphysical whimsy, and and mys terious (So I Am Glad,
George Bruce and Robert 1995), while Ian Rankin’s thrillers
Garioch evoked the strictures receive inter national acclaim, as
Early 20th-century of nature and social class. do JK Rowling’s hugely success-
Renaissance
Edwin Morgan has celebra ted ful Harry Potter books, famously
George Douglas Brown’s fierce art and modernity (Sonnets written in The Elephant House
anti-kailyard novel, The House from Scotland, 1984), Liz Loch- café in Edinburgh, an eatery
with the Green Shutters (1901), head continues to produce also frequented by Alexander
opened the century and fresh drama and poetry, and McCall Smith, author of The No.1
serious art was reborn. Hugh Jackie Kay explores the Ladies’ Detective Agency.
MacDiarmid’s poetry in the experience of being
1920s carried literature into a black Scottish
the stream of modernism. A citizen. While James
Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle Bridie, Bill Bryden
(1926) combines disparate and John Byrne
Scottish dialects with political made an impact in
and social commentary in one the theatre, Muriel
of the century’s great Spark rose to
symbolist works. Edwin Muir interna tional
also won international acclaim for her
acclaim. Succes sors included blackly comic
Sidney Goodsir Smith and novels (The Prime Poster for the film version of Irvine Welsh’s novel
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