Part of the historic county of Renfrewshire, Inverclyde is situated in the crook of the upper Firth of Clyde as it bends east toward Glasgow. Its largest towns, Greenock and Port Glasgow, were historic centres of shipbuilding. From the eighteenth century they were key ports for the British trade in goods from overseas, including commodities, […]
Tag: Scottish authors

Curators’ Favourites: James Leslie Mitchell’s Spartacus
Photograph by Zach Dyson. The choice: James Leslie Mitchell, Spartacus (London, 1933) 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 the other books James Leslie Mitchell published during his lifetime both under […]

Curators’ Favourites: The Travels of Cyrus
The choice: Andrew Michael Ramsay, A New Cyropaedia; or The Travels of Cyrus. (Edinburgh, 1729). Chosen by: Robert Betteridge, Rare Books Curator (Eighteenth-Century Printed Collections) Read or download this book from our Digital Gallery. Welcome to the latest of our new fortnightly series where we introduce you to some favourites from our collections for you to enjoy reading, […]

Curators’ Favourites: R.M. Ballantyne’s Fighting the flames
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 […]

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 […]