What do we mean by 'Scottish literature'? Why does it matter? How do we engage with it? Bringing infectious enthusiasm and a lifetime's experience to bear on this multi-faceted literary nation, Alan Riach, Professor of Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow, sets out to guide you through the varied and ever-evolving landscape of Scottish literature. A comprehensive and extensive work designed not only for scholars but also for the generally curious, Scottish Literature: an introduction tells the tale of Scotland's many voices across the ages, from Celtic pre-history to modern mass media. Forsaking critical jargon, Riach journeys chronologically through individual works and writers, both the famed and the forgotten, alongside broad overviews of cultural contexts which connect texts to their own times. Expanding the restrictive canon of days gone by, Riach also sets down a new core body of 'Scottish Literature': key writers and works in English, Scots, and Gaelic. Ranging across time and genre, Scottish Literature: an introduction invites you to hear Scotland through her own words.

This book is a detailed examination of one of the most important works of fantasy literature from the twentieth century. It goes through Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock considering how it engages with war on a personal and family level, how it plays with ideas of time as something fluid and disturbing, and how it presents mythology as something crude and dangerous. The book places Mythago Wood in the context of Holdstock's other works, noting in part how complex ideas of time have been a consistent element in his fiction. The book also briefly examines how the themes laid out in Mythago Wood are carried through into later books in the sequence as well as the Merlin Codex