The Edinburgh Companion to Scottish Women's Writing

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Explores women's writing in Scotland across a range of periods and genres
From early modern to contemporary writing, these 15 essays examine women's engagement with different areas of literary production and discuss the implications of their literary output for our wider understanding of Scottish literature. The contributors consider the ways in which women writers worked with 'feminine' arenas such as spirituality, oral culture, domestic fiction and the 'private' writing of letters and diaries, as well as with the traditionally 'masculine' areas of Enlightenment culture and the periodical press. They offer insights into women's role within Gaelic culture, women's negotiations of space, place and national identities and their appropriations of specific forms, such as supernatural, detective and historical fiction. They also provide analysis of writing by Margaret Oliphant, Janet Hamilton, Marion Angus, Catherine Carswell, Naomi Mitchison, Dorothy Dunnett, Denise Mina, A.L. Kennedy, Ali Smith, Liz Lochhead and Kathleen Jamie amongst others.
Glenda Norquay is Professor of Scottish Literary Studies at Liverpool John Moores University. Her books include Robert Louis Stevenson and Theories of Reading and the edited collection Across the Margins (with Gerry Smyth).

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Series Editors' Preface (p. vii)
• Acknowledgements (p. ix)
• Introduction (p. 1)
• 1 Spirituality (p. 11)
• 2 Gaelic Poetry and Song (p. 22)
• 3 Orality and the Ballad Tradition (p. 35)
• 4 Enlightenment Culture (p. 44)
• 5 Domestic Fiction (p. 53)
• 6 Janet Hamilton: Working-class Memoirist and Commentator (p. 63)
• 7 Private Writing (p. 75)
• 8 Margaret Oliphant and the Periodical Press (p. 84)
• 9 Writing the Supernatural (p. 94)
• 10 Interwar Literature (p. 103)
• 11 Writing Spaces (p. 113)
• 12 Experiment and Nation in the 1960s (p. 122)
• 13 Genre Fiction (p. 130)
• 14 Twentieth-Century Poetry (p. 140)
• 15 Contemporary Fiction (p. 152)
• Endnotes (p. 163)
• Further Reading (p. 193)
• Notes on Contributors (p. 198)
• Index (p. 201)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Norquay (Liverpool John Mores Univ., UK) has collected an impressive set of essays in this latest offering in the "Edinburgh Companions to Scottish Literature" series. She acknowledges the benchmark contribution of A History of Scottish Women's Writing, ed. by Douglas Gifford and Dorothy McMillan (1997); however, she argues Scotland's devolution and the increasing sophistication of gender studies have created the need for a new volume on the subject. The chronological and generic breadth of Norquay's collection is impressive, with essay topics ranging from spirituality, domestic fiction, and private writing to national politics, genre fiction, and contemporary poetry. The essays treat subjects from the 17th to the 21st centuries. An important inclusion is recognition of women's contributions to Gaelic poetry. Also valuable is the recognition of the high quality of contemporary Scottish women's writing, including poets such as Liz Lochhead and Kathleen Jamie and fiction writers such as Kate Atkinson, Jackie Kay, A. L. Kennedy, and Ali Smith in chapters by Norquay, Rhona Brown, and Monica Germana. The suggestions for further reading offer significant resources for those who would like to delve more deeply into the subject of Scotland's literary women. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers. D. A. Henningfeld emerita, Adrian College