“I am always uncertain whether or not I see a real or an assumed signature”: David Lyndsay, Mary Diana Dods and Walter Sholto Douglas 

David Lyndsay was the pseudonym of the author born Mary Diana Dods, and who from 1827 lived as Walter Sholto Douglas.   Details about their life are patchy. It was the researcher Betty T. Bennett, editor of Mary Shelley’s letters who first made the connection between Dods, Lyndsay and Douglas in the 1980s. Bennett’s research at […]

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“Out of obscurity I came – to obscurity I can easily return”: Charlotte Brontë, Currer Bell and Jane Eyre

The use of pseudonyms by the Brontë sisters is perhaps one of the best known examples of the use of pen names in English literature. This post focusses on Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855), whose novel ‘Jane Eyre’ was published 175 years ago in October 1847. It was Charlotte who persuaded her sisters to submit their writing […]

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Happy Dictionary Day!

Hello, I’m Moray Teale and I am the Europeana Rise of Literacy Project Coordinator at the National Library. Today, October 16th, is National Dictionary Day in the United States! It celebrates the birth of Noah Webster, the most famous American lexicographer. Webster’s Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1828 but it was not […]

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Happy Birthday Beano!

The Beano is Britain’s longest running comic and celebrated its 80th birthday on 30th July 2018. So a slightly belated happy birthday. We did though throw a party for the Beano at our Kelvin Hall premises in Glasgow on Saturday the 28th of July. We showed for one day only our copy of Beano issue […]

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16th Century Venetian Chapbooks

I’m presently cataloguing the important collection of  chapbooks held in the Lauriston Castle Collection. Chapbooks are small paper-covered booklets, usually printed on a single sheet, folded into books of 8, 12, 16 and 24 pages, and often illustrated with crude woodcuts. They were in circulation primarily from the 16th to the 19th centuries, and  sold by […]

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Gordon Williams 1934-2017. Novelist from Paisley who almost won the Booker Prize

George Gissing’s 1891 novel “New Grub Street” about literary and journalistic London has as its main characters two aspiring writers. Jasper Milvain who puts commercial success ahead of art and secures the editorship of an important periodical and Edwin Reardon who although a talented novelist can’t support his family, his wife leaves him and he […]

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