Collated by Peter Findlay. Aince a muckle pairt o Scotland’s industrial hertlaund, I recently heard “Fife” cried, “Scotland’s enchanting kingdom.” Ye micht be gast frae this nameliheid, hooiver, juist hae anither keek at this region afore makin judgement. For at truly is a pairt o oor country, whaur baith Fifers and veesitors alike, can gang on a byous an timeless journey o discovery. Believe me, […]
Category: 18th-century items
Zoom into North Lanarkshire
Collated by Charlotte James Robertson.North Lanarkshire borders the northeast of the City of Glasgow and contains many of Glasgow’s commuter towns. The South of the county has its roots in the historic county of Lanarkshire, which has existed since the time of King David I, ruler of Scotland from 1124 to 1153. In the 18th […]
Zoom into Aberdeenshire
Collated by Alison Leslie. Modern Aberdeenshire encompasses historic Aberdeenshire, Kincardineshire and part of Banffshire. To the south it borders Angus and Perth & Kinross, to the west Highland and Moray, and to the east Aberdeen City.
Zoom into Highland
Collated by Lucy Church. The Highland Council unitary authority is the largest by area in the UK, covering a third of Scotland’s land area, and 11% of the UK’s. Although it is the 7th largest council in Scotland by population, it has the lowest population density in the country. Its administrative centre is Inverness, but there […]
Collections available for music making
While the National Library of Scotland is a reference-only library and doesn’t lend music, mass digitisation has seen the set up of ‘Special Collections of Printed Music’ on our Digital Gallery. You can browse the different sections of this site or you can search for specific titles or composer’s names. Over the past year we […]
Zoom into West Lothian
Collated by Charlotte James Robertson. West Lothian is one of Scotland’s thirty-two unitary authorities; it is also one of the historic counties. It lies on the southern shore of the Firth of Forth and is predominantly rural, though there were extensive coal, iron, and shale oil mining operations in the 19th and 20th centuries. The old county town […]
Zoom into Renfrewshire
Collated by Jamie McIntosh. The council area of Renfrewshire sits to the south of the River Clyde and is bounded by five other local councils within the central south-west region of Scotland. First emerging as a county in the early 15th century through a land grant by King Robert III, it would then go on to take the form of the historic County of […]
Zoom into Falkirk
Collated by Moray Teale. The Falkirk council area was formed in 1996 when the Central Region was divided into several parts. Falkirk boasts many varied attractions from the ruins of the Antonine Wall, Callendar House and Blackness Castle to the engineering feats of the Forth and Clyde Canal and the Falkirk Wheel. More recently it has become famous for the […]
Henry Mackenzie and The Man of Feeling
April 2021 is the 250th anniversary of the publication of the sentimental novel The Man of Feeling by Henry Mackenzie in which the naïve Harley, in a series of fragmented episodes, encounters and weeps over the misfortunes of others and falls prey to the artfulness of more worldly characters. The book was a huge success […]
Bookplates in the National Library: Who owned books in 18th and 19th century Scotland?
This blog post is about the bookplates collections in the National Library of Scotland and about what it can tell us about the types of people who owned books in eighteenth and nineteenth century Scotland. My name is Bryony Pillath and I am doing an MSc in Book History and Material Culture at the University […]