Prologue Web archiving activities by General Collections in the last six months of 2021 is representative of at least six of the Hellenistic muses – music, dancing, and poetry (dance in this context being Scottish Country and Highland). Much of the activity builds on work carried out in previous years, particularly regarding music. While earlier […]
Tag: poetry
The Man Booker Prize at 50: Scottish authors and publishers that made the shortlist
In 2018 the Man Booker Prize celebrates its 50th anniversary. The first award was made in 1969 but most of the novels shortlisted were published in 1968. The 2018 shortlist will be announced on 20th September and the 2018 winner on the 16th October. To mark fifty years of the prize we thought we would […]
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, […]
Discover the work of Scottish poet Marion Angus
Marion Angus is a fine lyrical poet, most of whose work was written in the Scots language. Kathleen Jamie has said of Marion Angus “She has an authentic voice straight out of the ballad tradition, an eerie shimmer to her best poems”. Since her death her poems have gone in and out of print while […]
Five Scottish women writers whose works are being digitised for 2017
Once you get past the early hours of the morning traditionally very little happens in Scotland on New Year’s Day. Appropriately on January 1st 2017 something is happening that is very quiet, automatic but in terms of Scottish literature quite exciting. The works of five varied but important Scottish female authors will no longer be […]
Scots poet on display – T.S. Law
Thomas Sturdy Law (1916-1997), a committed and powerful poet in the Scots language, was born in Lanarkshire one hundred years ago on Hallowe’en. Our current display in the main hall of our George IV Bridge building in Edinburgh notes the centenary of his birth, drawing on our extensive manuscript and published collections.
Complete works of William Shakespeare in miniature
No two days are the same for a National Library of Scotland Cataloguer but is quite unusual for books to arrive on our desks with their own bookcases provided!
Out in Scotland! LGBT display
(Sandstone Press) February is LGBT History Month and we are celebrating the LGBT Scottish writing perspective with a small display just outside the Reading Rooms in our George IV Bridge building in Edinburgh. LGBT writing is especially vibrant in Scotland at the moment with many top sellers and prize winners. Recent National Library guest Val […]
Callum Macdonald Memorial Award 2016
In the week that Scottish poet Don Paterson won the Costa Book Award for poetry for his collection 40 sonnets, we are pleased to announce this year’s Callum Macdonald Memorial Award. In fact the entries have started to come in already. The Callum Macdonald Memorial Award celebrates Scottish pamphlet poetry and rewards the publisher rather […]
By way of illustration
Earlier this year we bought a gorgeous album of sketches and engravings by Joan Hassall. Hassall was a celebrated English wood engraver and illustrator, and the album tells the story of one book, ‘The Collected Poems of Andrew Young’. He was Scottish, and that’s why we bought it. The album includes Hassall’s account of how […]