Overview

This illuminating book traces the development of Scottish women’s writing in English from its genesis in the late eighteenth century to its flowering in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Hindered initially by the hostility of the Presbyterian Church and the self-serving attitude of the male hierarchy which denied them a proper education, an astonishing number of women found opportunities, in the midst of domestic obligations, to write, and often publish – novels, poetry, diaries, journalism, letters, essays and reportage. Charlotte Waldie and Christina Keith visited, respectively, Waterloo and Flanders in the immediate aftermath of battle. Another intrepid writer, Emily Graves, wrote a memoir of her travels in Transylvania in The Light Beyond the Forest – from which Bram Stoker directly lifted the most blood-curdling elements of Dracula. Others remembered include literary multi-tasker and businesswoman Christian Isabel Johnstone; playwright Joanna Baillie; working-class poets Marion Bernstein and Janet Hamilton; novelist Susan Ferrier; memoirist Anne Grant of Laggan; and writer and scientist Mary Somerville, depicted on the cover, after whom Somerville College, Oxford is named.  

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9781910682470

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Reviews

'Any open-minded reader will learn a lot from this survey of Scottish women writers of the 19th and early 20th centuries.' Stuart Kelly in Scotland on Sunday

Author Information

Eileen Dunlop is the author of over 20 novels and non-fiction titles for children, and of three biographies published by NMS Enterprises: Robert Louis Stevenson: The Travelling Mind; Queen Margaret of Scotland and Walter Scott: A Life in Story.

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