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.
A Scots Quair is revolutionary - innovative in its form, deft and humorous in its use of the Scots language, courageous in its characterisation and politics. Central to the trilogy is Chris Guthrie, one of the most remarkable female characters in modern literature. In Sunset song, Gibbon's finest achievement, the reader follows Chris through her girlhood in a tight-knit Scottish farming community: the seasons, the weddings, the funerals, the grind of work, the gossip. As the Great War takes its toll, machines repalce the old way of life. Cloud Howe and Grey Granite take Chris from her rural homeland to life in an industrial Scotland and hte desperate years of the Depression. The triology as a whole is a major achievment, a picture of society undergoing traumatic and far-reaching transformation. Always readable, never sentimental, A Scots Quair is one of the most important works of Scottish literature.
'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.
