LEWIS GRASSIC GIBBON (1901-1935) is one of the best known of early twentieth-century Scottish writers. Born James Leslie Mitchell, he grew up in the Mearns area of north-east Scotland, a landscape and farming life he recreated vividly in Sunset Song, the first book of his Scots Quair trilogy, published in 1932. A favourite for all ages, Gibbon's work is studied by students at all levels. A Flame in the Mearns is a unique collection of scholarly discussion and criticism and will be of interest to senior school pupils, college and university students, academics and lovers of literature. This new collection of essays celebrates Gibbon's achievement in his own time while emphasising his continuing relevance today - particularly the strong depiction of women in his fiction and his innovative narrative style which anticipates the work of writers such as Kelman and Welsh. This relationship with contemporary writers is most noticeable in the urban setting and political context of Grey Granite, while Sunset Song, with its engaging heroine Chris Guthrie, regularly appears in listings of the most popular Scottish novels. A Flame in the Mearns contains discussions of Gibbon's fiction, essays and little-known poetry, together with analyses of his language and politics. It is essential for all students and existing admirers as well as new readers of this important Scottish writer.

What made the twentieth-century interwar literary renaissance unique among Scottish cultural movements was the belief of those involved that any regeneration of the nation's artistic culture could not be separated from revival in its social, economic and political life. An additional priority was engagement with Europe and with the artistic and intellectual ideas of the modern period. Nationalism, internationalism and modernity were therefore seen as complementary and interactive parts of an ambitious national renewal project. Modernism and Nationalism: Literature and Society in Scotland 1918-1939 is an edited collection of primary sources from this challenging period. Through excerpts from periodical articles, book chapters, letters and other documents, it brings us the voices of writers such as MacDiarmid, Gunn, Linklater, Compton Mackenzie, Naomi Mitchison, the Muirs, Carswells and many others, reviewing and arguing over the literary, social, economic and political issues of their time, both at home and abroad, while in the process offering new insights into the ideas behind their own creative writing. The book makes an important contribution to our understanding of interwar Scotland.

This is the story of a literary marriage. It tells of the partnership between Edwin and Willa Muir, two intellectuals from small town Scottish backgrounds and their discovery of Europe in the years after the first and second world wars. It tells us about the cultural, social, and political issues of those dynamic and difficult years and much else, in intimate detail, about their own personal struggles. Edwin Muir was to become a leading poet in the twentieth century Scottish literary renaissance, but to make a living the couple also worked as translators of modern German literature, including key works by Hermann Broch and, most famously, Franz Kafka. They were intimate with many of the leading writers of their time, both at home and abroad, and these contacts, and their travels in Europe gave them a special and sometimes painful insight into the trials of the twentieth century. Dr Margery McCulloch's study draws on personal travel and a wealth of new sources from private correspondence, publishers' archives, the recollections of friends, and the dairies, unpublished journals, and autobiographical memoirs of Edwin and Willa themselves. This is the fullest account of the couple's life and times together during a long and loving marriage, not without its difficulties as Willa struggled to find proper acknowledgement of her translation skills, and space for her own creativity as a novelist in the shadow of her own ill health and Edwin's growing status as a major modern poet.