July 2012 Guest Editor Barbara Erskine on A Scots Quair...
A trilogy of stories set in Scotland in the first years of the 20th century this is wonderfully lyrical and atmospheric, conjuring the Scots countryside in the Mearns and the life of the characters who live there.
Written by one of the all-time greats of Scottish literature, truly revolutionary, A Scots Quair is a trilogy of novels: Sunset Song (1932), Cloud Howe (1933) and Grey Granite (1934). At each book's core is the heroine Chris Guthrie, as she grows from a child into adulthood through the Great War to the development of communism in the 1920s. Grassic Gibbon's writing is unique and riveting, blending Scots and English in an accessible style, and eloquent in its humanity and celebration of nature.
'This book may be read with delight the world over.' THE NEW YORK TIMES
'It would be impossible to overestimate Lewis Grassic Gibbon's importance ... A Scots Quair is a landmark work; it permeates the Scottish literary consciousness and colours all subsequent writing of its kind.' DAVID KERR CAMERON
Author
About Lewis Grassic Gibbon
Lewis Grassic Gibbon (James Leslie Mitchell) was one of the finest writers of the twentieth century. Born in Aberdeenshire in 1901, he died at the age of thirty-four. He was a prolific writer of novels, short stories, essays and science fiction, and his writing reflected his wide interest in religion, archaeology, history, politics and science. The Mearns trilogy, A Scots Quair, is his most renowned work, and has become a landmark in Scottish literature. Ian Campbell is Professor of Victorian and Scottish Literature at Edinburgh University.
