Jacobean Parnassus

Scottish Poetry from the Reign of James I
Edited by Alasdair A. MacDonald

ASL Annual Volume 51 – 2021 

A great deal of excellent poetry was composed in Scotland in the first quarter of the seventeenth century. This volume presents the work of seventeen poets whose writing explores love, religion, national identity, foreign travel, civil society, monarchy, the good life, friendship, retreat, and the nature and language of literature itself.

Dràma na Gàidhlig

Ceud Bliadhna air an Àrd-ùrlar 
A Century of Gaelic Drama 
Edited by Michelle Macleod 

ASLS Annual Volume 50 – 2020 

Modern Gaelic drama has the power to break down barriers and to touch people across linguistic and cultural divides. This collection is a celebration of Gaelic theatre, featuring eight Gaelic plays (with English translations) from the start of the twentieth century to the present day.

Corona Borealis 

Scottish Neo-Latin Poets on King James VI
and his Reign, 1566–1603
Edited by Steven J. Reid and David McOmish

ASLS Annual Volume 49 – 2019

Latin was Scotland’s third language in the early modern period, alongside Scots and Gaelic, and the reign of King James VI and I is considered to be a golden age of Scottish neo-Latin literature. Corona Borealis examines Latin poems by Scottish authors written between 1566 and 1603, and highlights the role of Latin in Scottish cultural life.

Edwin Morgan: In Touch With Language 

A New Prose Collection 1950–2005
Edited by John Coyle and James McGonigal

ASLS Annual Volume 48 – 2018

This volume presents previously uncollected prose works by Morgan – journalism, book and theatre reviews, scholarly essays and lectures, drama and radio scripts, forewords and afterwords – on topics from Gilgamesh to Ginsberg, cybernetics to sexualities, international literatures to the changing face of Glasgow. Everyone will find surprises and delights in this new collection.

Marriage: A Novel 

Susan Ferrier; Edited by Dorothy McMillan 

ASLS Annual Volume 47 – 2017  

What happens when a Regency society beauty’s romantic notions of the Highlands meet cold, damp reality? Edited and introduced by Dorothy McMillan, this new edition of Susan Ferrier’s classic novel captures the humour, sensitivity and elegance of the original, and gives Ferrier her proper place among Scotland’s notable writers. 

A Kist o Skinklan Things 

An anthology of Scots poetry from the first and second waves of the Scottish renaissance
Edited by J. Derrick McClure

ASLS Annual Volume 46 – 2016

The twentieth-century Scottish Renaissance saw a sudden and dramatic change in Scotland’s literary landscape. Beginning in the 1920s, Scottish writers increasingly engaged with contemporary social and political issues, and with questions of national identity.  A Kist o Skinklan Things contains a selection of the best work from this great period.

Poets of the People’s Journal 

Newspaper Poetry in Victorian Scotland 
Edited by Kirstie Blair 

ASLS Annual Volume 45 – 2015 

These works, written by tradesmen and women, factory workers, servants, and others, are both deeply fascinating and highly entertaining. Their voices are part of a literary heritage that deserves recovery, and their concerns and interests often chime, more than we might expect, with issues still very much current in the modern day.

Mary Paterson, or, The Fatal Error

A Story of the Burke & Hare Murders
David Pae; Edited by Caroline McCracken-Flesher

ASLS Annual Volume 44 – 2014

Mary Paterson, or, The Fatal Error is a high-Victorian tale of the foul deeds of Burke and Hare. David Pae’s galloping nineteenth-century novel not only provides a fascinating window into the popular Victorian imagination but is also a highly entertaining novel in its own right.

From the Line

Scottish War Poetry 1914–1945
ed. David Goldie & Roderick Watson

ASLS Annual Volume 43 – 2013

From the Line brings together the best of Scotland’s poetry from the two World Wars: 138 poems, from fifty-six poets, are represented here, from both men and women, from battlefields across the world and from the Home Front, too.

A Song of Glasgow Town

The Collected Poems of Marion Bernstein
ed. Edward H. Cohen, Anne R. Fertig & Linda Fleming

ASLS Annual Volume 42 – 2012

Glasgow poet Marion Bernstein (1846–1906) populated her poems with an array of ordinary citizens, from postmen and riveters to fishermen and street musicians. A Song of Glasgow Town contains all her published poetry, and provides a fascinating insight into Glasgow at a time of unprecedented social and economic change.

Traditional Tales

by Allan Cunningham; ed. Tim Killick

ASLS Annual Volume 41 – 2011

Traditional Tales is a selection of folk stories steeped in the traditions and popular literature of southern Scotland and northern England. Mixing the natural and supernatural, they blur the distinction between the oral traditions of the distant past and emerging ideas of literature and modernity.

Kirsteen

by Margaret Oliphant; ed. Anne M Scriven

ASLS Annual Volume 40 – 2010

Margaret Oliphant’s novel Kirsteen is a startlingly modern tale whose powerful voice, narrative drive and ironic exposure of injustice and hypocrisy provide a fascinating perspective on women in Victorian society.

Makeshift and Hunger March

by Dot Allan; ed. Moira Burgess

ASLS Annual Volume 39 – 2009

Confronting issues of class and gender, Makeshift and Hunger March offer an insight into women’s lives in Scotland in the first half of the 20th century. They are also highly readable and enjoyable works of fiction by a writer who deserves rediscovery by a new generation. 

The Cottagers of Glenburnie

and other educational writing
by Elizabeth Hamilton; ed. Pam Perkins

ASLS Annual Volume 38 – 2008

First published in 1808, The Cottagers of Glenburnie is a lively and entertaining tale, with vivid depictions – and biting satires – of Scottish peasant life. It also skilfully discusses and dissects class issues, British imperialism, and war.

Scottish People’s Theatre

Plays by Glasgow Unity Writers
ed. Bill Findlay

ASLS Annual Volume 37 – 2007

Glasgow Unity Theatre was perhaps the most celebrated and influential of mid-twentieth century Scottish theatre companies, with strong theatrical and political styles and commitments. This new publication allows five of their most important works to be read together for the first time, and seen fully in the context of their period and influence: ‘The Gorbals Story’ by Robert McLeish; ‘Men Should Weep’ by Ena Lamont Stewart; ‘Gold in his Boots’ by George Munro; ‘The Lambs of God’ by Benedick Scott; ‘All in Good Faith’ by Roddy McMillan.

Voices From Their Ain Countrie

The Poems of Marion Angus and Violet Jacob
ed. Katherine Gordon

ASLS Annual Volume 36 – 2006

2006 marks the 60th anniversary of the deaths of two significant 20th-century Scottish poets: Marion Angus and Violet Jacob. Passionate and radical, lyrical and rich in human experience, the poems of Marion Angus and Violet Jacob will delight and captivate. More than 200 poems are included in this comprehensive anthology, along with an overview of each poet’s life, a short synopsis of major themes in their poetry, and notes on individual poems, providing an invaluable critical background for a full appreciation of their work.

The Devil to Stage

Five Plays by James Bridie
ed. Gerard Carruthers

ASLS Annual Volume 35 – 2005

James Bridie is one of Scotland’s greatest playwrights, and one of the leading British dramatists of the 20th century. This collection of fiveacting scripts has been thoroughly corrected and re-set, and brings some of Bridie’s greatest works back into the public domain: ‘The Sunlight Sonata’ (1928); ‘The Anatomist’ (1930); ‘A Sleeping Clergyman’ (1933); ‘Mr Bolfry’ (1943); ‘Daphne Laureola’ (1949).

Serving Twa Maisters

Five Classic Plays in Scots Translation
ed. John Corbett & Bill Findlay

ASLS Annual Volume 34 – 2004 

The 1940s saw the birth of a modern tradition for translating drama into Scots. These translations helped place the vernacular at the heart of post-war Scottish drama. Serving Twa Maisters contains five classic works in this tradition: ‘Let Wives Tak Tent’ by Robert Kemp from Molière (1948); ‘The Burdies’ by Douglas Young from Aristophanes (1959); ‘The Servant o’ Twa Maisters’ by Victor Carin from Goldoni (1965); ‘The Hypochondriak’ by Hector MacMillan from Molière (1987); ‘Mr Puntila and his Man Matti’ by Peter Arnott from Brecht (1999).

Modernism and Nationalism

Literature & Society in Scotland 1918–1939
ed. Margery Palmer McCulloch

ASLS Annual Volume 33 – 2003

An invaluable collection of source material for the 20th-century Scottish literary renaissance. Through excepts from periodicals, books, letters and other documents, Modernism & Nationalism brings us the voices of writers such as MacDiarmid, Gunn, Linklater, Compton Mackenzie, Naomi Mitchison, Edwin and Willa Muir, Catherine Carswell and many others, reviewing literary, social economic and political issues and providing new insights into the ideas behind the creative explosion of the period.

Clan-Albin

A National Tale
Christian Isobel Johnstone; ed. Andrew Monnickendam

ASLS Annual Volume 32 – 2002

Written in 1815, the year of Waterloo, Clan-Albin is an extraordinary Romantic novel which communicates the horrors and tragedies of war. Although the story ranges from Scotland to Ireland to Spain following the adventures of a young soldier, it is the voices of the strong female characters that we hear most clearly.

Dàin do Eimhir

Poems to Eimhir
Sorley MacLean; ed. Christopher Whyte

ASLS Annual Volume 31 – 2001

Winner of the 2002 Saltire Society/National Library of
Scotland Research Book of the Year award

Widely regarded as his greatest achievement, MacLean’s cycle of love lyrics Dàin do Eimhir was only published in part in his lifetime; this edition includes six previously unpublished poems. With facing English translations throughout, Christopher Whyte’s authoritative and extensive commentaries help make a major masterpiece of 20th-century European literature fully available to the general public for the first time. 

Sir David Lyndsay: Selected Poems

ed. Janet Hadley Williams

ASLS Annual Volume 30 – 2000

In the late sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a literate Scots household was likely to own two books: the Bible and the poems of Sir David Lyndsay. This collection is both an accessible introduction to new readers, for whom there are on-the-page annotations and references, and a valuable resource for specialists, who will wish to work with freshly-established texts. The explanatory notes illustrate the richness of Lyndsay’s language and those contemporary references now less known. An Introduction provides biographical information and discusses important features of Lyndsay’s poetry, and a full Bibliography offers further support for scholars.

The Scotswoman at Home and Abroad

Non-Fiction Writing 1700–1900
ed. Dorothy McMillan

ASLS Annual Volume 29 – 1999

Practical or whimsical, written for pleasure or for publication and profit, the extracts in this remarkable anthology provide a vivid cross-section of half of Scotland’s culture from 1700 to 1900, using texts that have fallen out of print and including some previously unpublished material. Issues of class, gender and society are boldly illustrated, and the private and public life of the times can be read out of these works in ways that would not perhaps be possible from male writing of the period.