Scotland and the Scottish Diaspora
"It's part of me, Scotland. I'm still immersed in it even though I am not there." -- Irvine Welsh (1958 - ), Scots novelist, short story writer, playwright, author of Trainspotting among many other works).
All my life I have been interested in the history of Scotland and the profound consequences of the Scottish diaspora throughout the world. Scotland and the Scots are appealing in so many ways -- the beauty of the land- and seascapes, the food and drink, the extraordinarily resourceful and creative people, the dramatic history from antiquity to the present, the great literature and history and philosophy and religion. The subjects are themselves enough to inspire writing, but there is great satisfaction in the fact that the Scots have lived up to the subjects on their own writ.
Over many years I have researched the history of Cumberland Valley, and I have often talked about the Scots, the Scots-Irish, and the settlement of this part of the New World by these willing and not-so-willing exiles. In recognition of the history and significance of the Scots to our area, I fly the Saltire and carry these books and cds. I am always on the lookout for more.
P.S. Due to listing limitations, I have moved Ian Rankin and Denise Mina, two fine writers of the Scots Noir movement, over to our International Mystery page.
Storyteller: The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson
Storyteller: The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson
From a critically acclaimed biographer, an engrossing narrative of Robert Louis Stevenson’s life, a story as romantic and adventurous as his fiction
“This magnificent biography of Robert Louis Stevenson reveals much about a writer that we think we knew. . . . Dazzling.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) is famed for Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but he published many other novels and stories before his death at forty-four. Despite lifelong ill health, he had immense vitality; Mark Twain said his eyes burned with “smoldering rich fire.” Born in Edinburgh to a family of lighthouse engineers, Stevenson set many stories in Scotland but sought travel and adventure in a life as romantic as his novels. “I loved a ship,” he wrote, “as a man loves burgundy or daybreak.” The adventures were shared with his free-spirited American wife, Fanny, with whom he moved to the South Pacific.
Samoan friends named Stevenson “Storyteller.” Reading, he said, “should be absorbing and voluptuous; we should gloat over a book, be rapt clean out of ourselves.” His own books have been translated into dozens of languages. Jorge Luis Borges called his stories “one of the forms of happiness,” and other modernist masters as various as Proust, Nabokov, and Calvino have paid tribute to his greatness as a literary artist.
In Storyteller, Leo Damrosch brings to life an unforgettable personality, illuminated by many who knew Stevenson well and drawing from thousands of the writer’s letters in his many voices and moods—playful, imaginative, at times tragic.