A FLAME IN THE MEARNS

Lewis Grassic Gibbon: a centenary celebration

Edited by Margery Palmer McCulloch and Sarah M. Dunnigan

Published in: Paperback
By: Association for Scottish Literary Studies, 2003
Price: £19.95
ISBN 978-0-948877-54-4

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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.

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.

CONTENTS

Preface (Ian Campbell)
Introduction (Margery Palmer McCulloch and Sarah M. Dunnigan)

• Modernism and Marxism in A Scots Quair (Margery Palmer McCulloch)
• ‘Women’s Time’: Reading the Quair as a Feminist Text (Alison Lumsden)
• Gibbon’s Chris: A Celebration with Some Reservations (Isobel Murray)
• From Grey Granite to Urban Grit: A Revolution in Perspectives (David Borthwick)
• Shouting Too Loudly: Leslie Mitchell, Humanism and the Art of Excess (William K. Malcolm)
• Ecstasy Controlled: The Prose Styles of James Leslie Mitchell and Lewis Grasssic Gibbon (John Corbett)
• The Rendering of Community Voices in Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Short Stories(Catriona M. Low)
• From Exile: The Poetry of Lewis Grassic Gibbon (Valentina Bold)
• Lewis Grassic Gibbon and the Scottish Enlightenment (Gerard Carruthers)
• The Gospels According to Saint Bakunin: Lewis Grassic Gibbon and Libertarian Communism (Keith Dixon)
• The Kindness of Friends: The Grassic Gibbon Centre (Isabella M. Williamson)
• Lewis Grassic Gibbon (James Leslie Mitchell): A Bibliographical Checklist (Hamish Whyte)

Index