This illuminating book traces the development of Scottish women's writing in English from its genesis in the late eighteenth century to its flowering in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Hindered initially by the hostility of the Presbyterian Church and the self-serving attitude of the male hierarchy which denied them a proper education, an astonishing number of women found opportunities, in the midst of domestic obligations, to write, and often publish - novels, poetry, diaries, journalism, letters, essays and reportage. Charlotte Waldie and Christina Keith visited, respectively, Waterloo and Flanders in the immediate aftermath of battle. Another intrepid writer, Emily Graves, wrote a memoir of her travels in Transylvania in The Light Beyond the Forest - from which Bram Stoker directly lifted the most blood-curdling elements of Dracula. Others remembered include literary multi-tasker and businesswoman Christian Isabel Johnstone; playwright Joanna Baillie; working-class poets Marion Bernstein and Janet Hamilton; novelist Susan Ferrier; memoirist Anne Grant of Laggan; and writer and scientist Mary Somerville, depicted on the cover, after whom Somerville College, Oxford is named.

Set in the aftermath of the 1707 Union of the Parliaments, Sir Walter Scott's romantic tragedy The Bride of Lammermoor (1819) conveys the anxiety of a fractured Scottish society through the ill-fated romance of two young lovers, Edgar and Lucy. With its heady gothic mixture of history, fiction, humour, romance, and the supernatural, The Bride of Lammermoor is both intriguing and entertaining, and an ideal text for further study. Eileen Dunlop's SCOTNOTE explores and explains the historical, social and political background of this influential novel, and is an ideal study guide for senior school pupils and students.

"Scotties" are exciting, full colour information books for young readers. Each title contains a wealth of interesting facts, stimulating activities, websites and suggestions for places to visit. An 8pp pull-out black and white section with games, puzzles and drawings for colouring-in can be used at home or photocopied for classroom use. In this brand new title find out about: Ghosts and Graveyards - including the Undead Sailor, and the Weeping Tombstone; Haunted Houses - such as Haddington House with its ghostly horse; Witches - good spells and bad spells; Hallowe'en - guising, and Mischief Night; Fairies - fallen angels, household helpers, changelings, and more; Glaistigs and Brownies - a glaistig is a thin woman with a face like 'a grey stone overgrown with lichen'; and, Merfolk - from golden-haired mermaids to the Blue Men of the Minch.

'For we are very lucky, with a lamp before the door And Leerie stops to light it, as he lights so many more...' The picture of a small boy peering from a window at dusk to watch the lamplighter in the street is one of the enduring images of 19th-century Edinburgh, and the child probably the most famous ever brought up there. Robert Louis Stevenson loved to conjure up a dashing, romantic lineage for himself, dreaming that he was descended from the colourful outlaw Rob Roy MacGregor. The reality was less flamboyant but no less remarkable and he would learn that the street lamps of Edinburgh owed their brilliance to the scientific work of his own great-grandfather. This welcome addition to the Robert Louis Stevenson canon gives a concise account of his life - his family background, childhood and adolescence in a Calvinist, hard-working household in Scotland, his travels in three continents and his final years in the South Seas.It examines his relationships with his parents and his nurse, with English and American friends, particularly the family into which he married, and with the Samoan islanders among whom he died at the age of 44. Stevenson's childhood experiences and Scottish identity fed his fertile imagination wherever he found himself. His legacy includes travel writing, essays and poetry, and novels such as "Treasure Island", "Kidnapped", "The Master of Ballantrae", "Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde", "St Ives" and "Weir of Hermiston", still read and enjoyed more than one hundred years after his death. "Robert Louis Stevenson: The Travelling Mind" is an insightful introduction to the life and work of one of the world's best-loved writers.