“It was beneath the trees of the grounds belonging to our house, or on the bleak sides of the woodless mountains near, that my true compositions, the airy flights of my imagination, were born and fostered.”
—Mary Shelley, introduction to FRANKENSTEIN (1831 edn)
Prof Daniel Cook examines why Scotland mattered so much to Mary Shelley, & considers Shelley’s position in the Scottish Gothic tradition
https://www.nls.uk/papercut/mary-shelley-and-the-scottish-gothic-tradition/
Poet talk!
Ye’d lauch at sic extremity o image,
sic grand excess o adoration. Blushes
rid as the rinnin bluid
in my veins wad skail like smirr
owre the pastures o your far wilderness,
the calm swaws o your kenless deeps…
—Donald Campbell, “Cuttag”
published in A KIST O SKINKLAN THINGS (ASL, 2016)
https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/volumes/a-kist-o-skinlan-things/
#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #Scotstober #smirr
Film screening: Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde
30 Oct, National Library of Scotland at Kelvinhall, Glasgow – free but ticketed
Edinburgh, 1892. Upright lawyer Gabriel Utterson is concerned by his good friend Dr Henry Jekyll’s obsession with the mysterious and dangerous Mr. Hyde…
A film by Hope Dickson Leach & Vlad Butucea
A National Theatre of Scotland production
#Scottish #literature #film #cinema #JekyllandHyde #RobertLouisStevenson
James Boswell (1740–1795) – a man for whom the word “scapegrace” might have been invented – was born #OTD, 29 Oct.
A Happy Bozzy Birthday thread
1/5
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/james-boswells-scotland-106667503/
#Scottish #literature #biography #JamesBoswell #18thcentury #SamuelJohnson
Jessie Kesson (1916–1994) was born #OTD, 28 Oct. Taken from her mother at 10, she spent 6 years in an orphanage; although she displayed obvious academic talent she was denied any chance of further education & was sent into domestic servitude aged 16.
Despite these & other hardships she became a highly regarded novelist whose works explore ordinary women’s lives with clarity & poetic prose
A 🎂🧵
1/5
https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/9964/jessie-kesson-novelist
#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #womenwriters #workingclass
