The Kailyard authors
3 total works
Ian Maclaren's Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush is one of the most notorious works of Scottish literature. First published in 1894, the book was an instant best-seller. Millions of readers across the world rushed to devour these nostalgic tales of Scottish life in a bygone age. Based on the author's experiences as a Free Church minister in rural Perthshire, the book captured the contemporary taste with its blend of humour and pathos and its racy Scots dialogue. With a new introduction which explains the importance of Maclaren's writing in literary and religious debates of the period, readers can now view afresh a work which remains a vital part of the Scottish literary tradition.
Set in Glasgow in the 1880s, St Jude's is one of Ian Maclaren's lesser-known collections of stories. Here the Kailyard author leaves behind the pastoral idyll of his earlier books and enters the urban milieu. Written during a period of crisis in the Free Kirk, the stories focus on the experiences of a young minister and on the social and spiritual lives of the members of a city parish. Written with all the author's characteristic blend of humour and sentiment, and his sharp dialogue and lively characterisation, St Jude's offers a subtle account of the values and habits of the modern city as well as providing an important reflection of religious life in Scotland at the close of the nineteenth century. -- Andrew Nash holds degrees from the universities of Dundee, Edinburgh and St Andrews and now teaches at the University of Reading. He has written widely on nineteenth and twentieth century publishing history and various aspects of Scottish literature. His books include: Kailyard and Scottish Literature and the edited volumes The Culture of Collected Editions and Literary Cultures and the Material Book.
irst published in 1895, The Days of Auld Langsyne was Ian Maclaren's second collection of sketches from 'Drumtochty'. Following in the wake of the enormous success of Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush (1894), the volume established the Rev. John Watson as one of the most widely-read authors in Britain and America. Based on memories of life as a minister of the Free Kirk in Logiealmond, Perthshire, the stories, with their skilful use of local dialect, offer a nostalgic evocation of rural Scottish life in the 1860s and 1870s. A new introduction places Maclaren's work in the context of Scottish fiction at the end of the nineteenth century and addresses the style of his writing and his representation of community values and religious life in Scotland. Ian Campbell is Professor of Scottish and Victorian Literature at the University of Edinburgh, where he has been since 1964. His Kailyard was published in 1981, and a re-issue of J.M. Barrie's A Window in Thrums in 2005. He has wide interests in Scottish fiction of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and is one of the editors of the Duke-Edinburgh edition of The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle.