Edinburgh: Literary Lives and Landscapes


Book Description

Edinburgh enjoys a long and impressive literary heritage and can claim connections with some of the world's most famous writers. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson and Sir Walter Scott were all natives of the city, while Robert Burns, Charles Dickens, J.M. Barrie and Samuel Johnson were just a few of those who forged links with what William Cobbett described as 'the finest city in the kingdom'. Edinburgh has provided the setting for countless novels over the years, not least in more recent times with Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) and Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting (1993). Nowadays, the city hosts its annual International Book Festival, when, for a couple of weeks every August, authors and visitors from far and wide flock to Charlotte Square Gardens for 'the biggest celebration of the written word in the world'. Published to coincide with the 21st Edinburgh International Book Festival, this work includes not only native Edinburgh authors but others on whom the city had a profound influence.




A Work of Beauty


Book Description

'I love this city, and always shall. I write about it. I dream about it. I walk its streets and see something new each day - traces of faded lettering on the stone, still legible, but just; some facade that I have walked past before and not noticed; an unregarded doorway with the names, in brass, of those who lived there sixty years ago, the bell-pulls sometimes still in place, as if one might summon long-departed residents from their slumbers.'Edinburgh is a city of stories - a place that has witnessed everything from great historical upheavals, to the individual lives of a remarkable cast of characters. Every spire, cobblestone, bridge, close and avenue has a tale to tell.In this sumptuous new book, Alexander McCall Smith curates his own, distinctive story of Edinburgh - combining his affectionate, incisive wit with a wealth of stunning imagery drawn from Scotland's national collection of architecture and archaeology. Through a series of photographs, maps, drawings and paintings - many never before published - he takes the reader on a unique tour. Just like the city's architecture, the book can move in an instant from sweeping views to secret, hidden vignettes. This is a story of famous landmarks and lost buildings; the people who made them; the people who lived in them.A Work of Beauty is an intimate portrait of a city by one of Scotland's greatest storytellers.




The Book of Ebenezer le Page


Book Description

Ebenezer Le Page, cantankerous, opinionated, and charming, is one of the most compelling literary creations of the late twentieth century. Eighty years old, Ebenezer has lived his whole life on the Channel Island of Guernsey, a stony speck of a place caught between the coasts of England and France yet a world apart from either. Ebenezer himself is fiercely independent, but as he reaches the end of his life he is determined to tell his own story and the stories of those he has known. He writes of family secrets and feuds, unforgettable friendships and friendships betrayed, love glimpsed and lost. The Book of Ebenezer Le Page is a beautifully detailed chronicle of a life, but it is equally an oblique reckoning with the traumas of the twentieth century, as Ebenezer recalls both the men lost to the Great War and the German Occupation of Guernsey during World War II, and looks with despair at the encroachments of commerce and tourism on his beloved island. G. B. Edwards labored in obscurity all his life and completed The Book of Ebenezer Le Page shortly before his death. Published posthumously, the book is a triumph of the storyteller’s art that conjures up the extraordinary voice of a living man.




The Oxford Art Book


Book Description

A colourful showcase of one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Inspired by Oxford's unique architecture and historic university, over 50 artists have produced a unique collection of contemporary images illustrating all aspects of the city and surrounding area. Oxford is both a thriving city and a byword for one of the world's best universities. Its ancient buildings are the wonder of the world, still used and inhabited by an energetic and passionate student community. From tightly-packed Cornmarket street catering for the shoppers of the busy city to Oxford's lush riverside walks that provide an asylum from the bustle of everyday life, to traditional St Giles's Fair and May Day that attract visitors from across Oxfordshire and beyond, this book represents them all, including: - Quirky hidden gems such as The Eagle and Child (the pub frequented by J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis) and the many cafes of the Covered Market - Innovative representations of classic tourist sites: the Bodleian Library, the Radcliffe Camera, the Sheldonian Theatre, Christ Church College, Magdalen College and many more... - The Mini Car Plant and Cowley Road transformed into artworks There is so much to wonder at in this lovely book. Its enthusiasm reveals a passion for both contemporary art and the lovely city of Oxford. It will renew memories and inspire visits and revisits to all its haunts.




Scotland's Landscapes


Book Description




Edinburgh


Book Description

From Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to Irvine Welsh—a fresh look at an ancient region's connection to the written word Edinburgh enjoys a long and impressive literary heritage and can claim connections with some of the world's most famous writers. This history mixes anecdotes, musings, and serious analysis to explore the impact of the city upon literature. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Sir Walter Scott were all natives of the city, while Robert Burns, Charles Dickens, J. M. Barrie, and Samuel Johnson were just a few of those who forged links with what William Cobbett described as "the finest city in the kingdom." Edinburgh has provided the setting for countless novels over the years, not least in more recent times with Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting. The book concludes with a look at Edinburgh's impressive annual International Book Festival, "the biggest celebration of the written word in the world."




Landscape, Literature and English Religious Culture, 1660-1800


Book Description

Landscape, Literature and English Religious Culture, 1660-1800 offers a powerful revisionist account of the intellectual significance of landscape descriptions during the 'long' Eighteenth-century. Landscape has long been a major arena for debate about the nature of Eighteenth-century English culture; this book surveys those debates and offers a provocative new account. Mayhew shows that describing landscape was a religiously contested practice, and that different theological positions led differing authors to different descriptive approaches. Landscape description, then, shows English intellectual life still in the grips of a Christian and classical mentality in the 'long' Eighteenth-century.










Edinburgh Companion to Robert Louis Stevenson


Book Description

This wide-ranging collection is the first to set Robert Louis Stevenson in detailed social, political and literary contexts.The book takes account of both Stevenson's extraordinary thematic and generic diversity and his geographical range. The chapters explore his relation to late nineteenth-century publishing, psychology, travel, the colonial world, and the emergence of modernism in prose and poetry. Through the pivotal figure of Stevenson, the collection explores how literary publishing and cultural life changed across the second half of the nineteenth century. Stevenson emerges as a complex writer, author both of hugely popular boys' stories and of seminally important adult novels, as well as the literary figure who debated with Henry James the theory of fiction and the nature of realism.The collection shows how interest in the unconscious and changes in the conception of childhood demand that we re-evaluate our ideas of his writing. Individual essays by international experts trace Stevenson' lit