In order to build and promote the Library’s collections you need to have at least some familiarity with them which means doing a bit of reading. Sadly contrary to what some might think National Library of Scotland staff don’t spend their working days reading the collections, we have too many other things to do. So […]
Tag: Scottish authors
Sunset Song is now available to read on our website
We have just made available all the books published by James Leslie Mitchell (1901-1935) during his lifetime on our website. Included are the three novels he published under the pseudonym Lewis Grassic Gibbon namely “Sunset Song” (1932); “Cloud Howe” (1933) and “Grey Granite” (1934) which are collectively known as “A Scots Quair”. http://digital.nls.uk/lewis-grassic-gibbon-books You can […]
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 […]
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 […]
Elizabeth Craig 1883-1980: Scotland’s first celebrity chef?
“5 Ingredients” by Jamie Oliver was the best-selling book in Britain last year selling over 700,000 copies and confirming the popularity of the celebrity chef. We perhaps think of celebrity chefs as a fairly recent phenomenon dating back to the 1950s with Fanny Craddock and later Delia Smith, Ken Hom and Keith Floyd leading the […]
Making Public Alasdair Gray Prints
Two signed, limited-edition prints by Scottish artist, writer and cultural icon Alasdair Gray have just been acquired by The National Library of Scotland.
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 […]
The pulp novels of Nat Karta
One of the main aims of the National Library of Scotland is to collect a copy of every book published in the United Kingdom and in particular every book published in Scotland. Inevitably we miss a few items. Recently we were delighted to plug a small hole in our collections dating from the late 1940s […]
“Knots and Crosses” the first Rebus novel is 30 years old
It is thirty years since the first Rebus novel “Knots & crosses” was published and to mark the occasion REBUSFEST a weekend of literature, art, film and music celebrating the detective is being held in Edinburgh from 30th June to 2nd July. You can tour Rebus’s Edinburgh, sample whisky at the Caledonian Hotel or attend […]
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 […]