Scottish
literature is robust with text written in English, Scottish Gaelic, Scots,
French and Latin. Robert Burns
wrote in the Scots language, although much of his writing was also done in
English.
Sir
James Matthew Barrie,
1st Baronet,
OM
, novelist and dramatist, was born ninth of ten children in Kirriemuir
in 1860. The author of
Peter Pan, introduced the “kailyard
tradition” at the end of the 19th century, with elements of
fantasy and folklore. He studied
at
Edinburgh
University
and had articles published in magazines while still in college.
He also met Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Robert Louis Stevenson.
After graduation, he worked at the Nottingham Journal, and later back in Kirriemuir
he wrote a bunch of successful series of stories about tales of his town.
In
London
he teamed up with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and co-authored an opera called Jane
Annie, it was a flop and has never been heard of since.
Peter
Pan was first published in 1901. In
1904 it was performed as a stage play, and later appeared in the form of a
novel. He was knighted in 1913,
the year in which he also became rector of
St. Andrews
University
. You will find a statue of
Barrie in
Kensington
Gardens
in
London
, and also one of Peter Pan in Kirriemuir where he
is buried.
Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of
Sherlock Holmes, was born in
Edinburgh
in 1859. He studied
medicine at
Edinburgh
University
. He also spent some time as a
ship’s surgeon on board a whaler in the Artic, and time as a ship’s
surgeon on a passenger ship to
West Africa
. He set up his practice in Southsea,
near
Portsmouth
, where he started writing. Doyle married twice and set up a practice as an
oculist in
London
in 1891. In 1893 Doyle killed off
Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty by having them fall to their deaths in
a waterfall, but an outraged public brought them back in 1902, and he
resurrected Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles.
He
continued to write throughout his life and also served as a doctor in
South Africa
during the Boer War. Later in
life he became very interested in spiritualism.
He died in 1930.
Robert
Louis Stevenson, was born in
Edinburgh
in 1850. He entered the
University
of
Edinburgh
to study engineering, but did not like it, so he switched to studying law.
In 1875 he passed the Bar, but by then he had already published several
articles for journals.
As
a child he had suffered from tuberculosis, so later he traveled extensively
trying to find a climate to help his lungs.
The idea to write
Treasure Island
came to him while walking on a
California
beach.
Kidnapped
was published in 1886. His biggest hit although was The Strange Case of Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He sold
40,000 copies in 1886. He visited
Hawaii
several times and liked living in the South Pacific.
He purchased an estate in
Samoa
, where he is buried. He died
from a brain hemorrhage at the age of 44.
Dame Muriel Sparks,
born in Edinburgh in 1918, is another great Scottish writer who wrote many
interesting novels: The Comforters, published in 1954; The Bachelors,
1960; The Very Fine Clock 1968; Not to Disturb 1971; Symposium, 1990; and her
last novel, The Finishing School, 2004, to name a few. But she is
perhaps known for her book about the divinely eccentric Miss Jean Brodie
which was published in 1961, as The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Maggie
Smith is probably the best idiosyncratic Brodie to interpret the
self-destructive girls' school teacher. Sparks lived in England
before spending her last years in Tuscany. She died in 2006, not on
speaking terms with her only son.
The
rest of this newsletter will be filled with my photos of Scotland.
Enjoy!