It all began a few years ago, when representatives of the Library sat down with renowned crime writer Ian Rankin to discuss the acquisition of his extensive literary archive. Fast-forward to September 2019, when I took up the post of Ian Rankin Project Curator, tasked with the arrangement, cataloguing, and promotion of this incredible collection […]
Tag: literature
Modernist Periodicals at the National Library of Scotland
Guest blog by Dr Francesca Bratton Dr Francesca Bratton (Durham University) recently completed her AHRC funded PhD on Hart Crane and the Little Magazine. She was a Library of Congress Kluge Fellow in 2013-14 and is currently teaching at Durham University and is developing a project on the roots of New Criticism in literary periodicals, […]
The pleasure of reading
Antonia Fraser describes herself as an ‘addict’ of the written word. In this revealing book, she brings together more than forty leading writers (writing in the English language) of all ages and from backgrounds a diverse as possible, to explain what inspired their interest in books and what keeps them reading. First published in 1992, […]
Reading the World : Confessions of a Literary Explorer
In 2012, Ann Morgan set out to read a book from every country in the world, focusing mainly on contemporary novels. On setting herself this challenge, she faced a number of obstacles including a lack of English translations, issues over censorship and discovering that some countries had very few published works. Through the generosity of […]
Why not Catch-21?
(Photo credit: Frances Lincoln) (Image above shows the front cover of a book sitting on a book shelf surrounded by other books. The title and author of the book, Why not catch-21? The stories behind the title. Gary Dexter, are shown) Most book titles simply describe the contents of the book they are attached to. […]