The choice: R.M. Ballantyne, Fighting the flames (London, 1867). Chosen by: Graham Hogg, Curator (19th-Century Printed Collections and Photo-graphs), Rare Books, Maps and Music Collections Welcome to the latest of our fortnightly series where we introduce you to some favourites from our collections for you to enjoy reading, all freely available online. Read or download […]
Tag: Scottish authors
Curators’ Favourites: J. Leslie Mitchell’s The Thirteenth Disciple
The choice: J. Leslie Mitchell, The Thirteenth Disciple: Being Portrait and Saga of Malcom Maudsley in His Adventure Through the Dark Corridor. (London, 1931). Chosen by: Ian Scott, Curator in General Collections Read or download this book from the Lewis Grassic Gibbon page on our digital gallery http://digital.nls.uk/lewis-grassic-gibbon-books/archive/205174226 where you will find this novel alongside […]
Curators’ Favourites: Catherine Carswell’s The Camomile
The choice: Catherine Carswell, The Camomile: An Invention (London, 1922). Chosen by: Helen Vincent, Head of Rare Books, Maps and Music Read or download this book from our Digital Gallery. Welcome to this first of a new fortnightly series where we introduce you to some favourites from our collections for you to enjoy reading, all […]
Lockdown reading: Alistair MacLean’s “When eight bells toll”
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 […]
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 […]