“Farewell Miss Julie Logan: A Wintry Tale”, by J.M. Barrie
Written in diary form & telling of an uncanny romance in a remote winter glen, “Farewell Miss Julie Logan” evokes J.M. Barrie’s fascination with longing, death & loss in one of the most unnerving & tenacious examples of #Gothic fiction ever to come from #Scotland
Listen to the story online, courtesy of Romancing the Gothic:
“In story after story, epicene young men, difficult children, or wild beasts set out to shake up the stifling complacency around them.”
Hector Hugh Munro (1870–1916) – Saki – was born #OTD, 18 Dec, in Akyab (now Sittwe), in Myanmar. Although born in the Raj & raised in England, his parents were Scots & he considered himself to be Scottish, too. Fatema Ahmed looks at his fierce, funny, & wicked fiction
“Children in Saki are often victors in the battle against authority; his stories salute their boldness but have no truck with sentiment. The children are usually nasty, brutish and short, and loved for it.”
—Katherine Rundell on #Saki, for the London Review of Books
Saki’s “Tobermory”, “The Boar-Pig”, “The Lumber Room”, & many others are hilarious (as is “Esmé”, if you don’t mind all the blood…). But his horrifying winter tale “The Interlopers” is a work of #Gothic art, worthy of the tradition of James Hogg & #RobertLouisStevenson
CFP: “Scotland 30 years after Trainspotting”
Études écossaises, UGA éditions, Université Grenoble Alpes
This issue of Études écossaises seeks to take TRAINSPOTTING’s unique depiction of Scottish society as the starting point for an
investigation into the nature of contemporary Scottish life & how it has evolved between 1993 & 2023. Deadline for abstracts: 1 March 2024
“The effect of the piece, read all at once, is exhilarating. It’s quite like reading a book of interviews with V. S. Naipaul. Three quarters of the world’s literature is dismissed with mandarin contempt, and yet the unmistakable love of good writing is everywhere on display.”
Anthony Madrid on the rigmarole William Drummond of Hawthornden produced, of Ben Jonson’s conversations
GRANITE NOIR 2024
Aberdeen’s #CrimeFiction Festival
20–25 February
Granite Noir is inspired by crime fiction in all its forms, by the fantastic contribution that #Scottish writers make, by our love affair with #Nordic Noir, & most of all inspired by Aberdeen – steeped in history, atmospheric, quirky & with a strong sense of place
George MacDonald (1824–1905) was born #OTD, 10 Dec. Seen by many as the forefather of modern #fantasy fiction, he was a huge influence on later writers including JRR #Tolkien & #CSLewis
“The sheer imaginative force of LILITH makes nonsense of our everyday notions of ‘good writing’. MacDonald aims not to make us read, but to make us dream”
David Melville Wingrove on LILITH, MacDonald’s last – & very strange – major work
RETHINKING GEORGE MACDONALD: 16 essays on MacDonald’s place in the #Victorian literary scene, his engagement with the works of his contemporaries, & his interest in the social, political, & theological movements of his age – also online via Project MUSE
Characterization & symbolism in Neil Gunn’s three historical novels
12 Dec, 5–6:30pm GMT/6–7:30 CET, free online
This talk will examine three historical novels by Neil M. Gunn (1891–1973), depicting Scottish communities at a time of transition: Sun Circle, Butcher’s Broom, & The Silver Darlings
cfp: DEVILS & JUSTIFIED SINNERS
24–25 Aug 2024
An online conference from Romancing the Gothic to mark the 200th anniversary of James Hogg’s THE PRIVATE MEMOIRS & CONFESSIONS OF A JUSTIFIED SINNER – seeking papers on
“What sprang forth from Carlyle’s pen was not a dry account of the French Revolution, but a book brimming with passion and philosophy, one that offered a new style of storytelling that influenced a generation of Victorian writers.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) was born #OTD, 4 Dec. His THE FRENCH REVOLUTION established him as one of the most important social & cultural commentators of his day
My son, then ten years old, was playing, if you please, with Louis […]. And little Austin burst into my room and said, “Louis says come and play.” But oh, I’ll regret it to my dying day, I said, “Oh, later when I’ve finished my letter I’ll come.” And I didn’t go.
—RLS’s stepdaughter Belle Strong, speaking in 1949, recalls the day Stevenson died
“Requiem”, above – Robert Louis Stevenson’s self-composed epitaph – provides the title for Philip Larkin’s most famous #poem, “This Be the Verse”. Daniel Bosch compares the two epitaphic fictions in the Paris Review
Dr Craig Lamont looks at how Robert Louis Stevenson & his literary creations have been – & continue to be – remembered & memorialised, in Scotland & around the world
The #Scottish writer published five #gothic romance novels by the early 1800s but never put her #poetry in print. In 1919, excerpts of her poetry appeared in a newspaper, but the source of these poems – a notebook she presented to a family friend – disappeared. Now Craik’s poetry manuscript has been found & published by two @uofsc faculty members
“A little more than ten years after his death, we are experiencing a timely, double-pronged Banks bump. His 13 sci-fi books as Iain M Banks are being reissued this month with eye-catching new cover art […] Even more exciting: the recent publication of behind-the-curtain coffee table tome The Culture: The Drawings, collating his earliest conceptual designs for what would become his signature sci-fi creation.”
“The magic for me growing up was that, behind closed doors, there were these interesting, eccentric characters. They were doing strange and fascinating things – in Airdrie. Think about that: how hard it must have been to be Iggy Pop here. Harder than being Iggy Pop wherever the real one was hanging out.”
THIS IS MEMORIAL DEVICE author David Keenan on growing up in Airdrie, & why small towns should be loved & cherished more
Monday 27 Nov, University of Sussex, & online. Free
This masterclass invites scholars of pan-#British seventeenth-century #literature to a day full of workshop & round-table discussion on the skills & knowledge needed to approach texts in the #Scottish#17thcentury corpus
In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. This podcast by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation explores the novels on Burgess’s list with the help of writers, critics & other special guests.
This episode explores Alasdair Gray’s LANARK with writer & biographer Rodge Glass.