Scottish Stories

Walter Scott was born in Edinburgh on 15 August 1777. He was educated inEdinburgh and called to the bar in 1792, succeeding his father asWriter to the Signet, then Clerk of Session. He published anonymoustranslations of German Romantic poetry from 1797, in which year he alsomarried. In 1805 he published his first major work, a romantic poemcalled The Lay of the Last Minstrel, became a partner in a printing business, and several other long poems followed, including Marmion (1808) and The Lady of the Lake (1810). These poems found acclaim and great popularity, but from 1814 and the publication of Waverley,Scott turned almost exclusively to novel-writing, albeit anonymously. Ahugely prolific period of writing produced over twenty-five novels,including Rob Roy (1817), The Heart of Midlothian (1818), The Bride of Lammermoor (1819), Kenilworth (1821) and Redgauntlet(1824). Already sheriff-depute of Selkirkshire, Scott was created abaronet in 1820. The printing business in which Scott was a partner raninto financial difficulties in1826, and Scott devoted his energies towork in order to repay the firm’s creditors, publishing many morenovels, dramatic works, histories and a life of Napoleon Bonaparte. SirWalter Scott died on 21 September 1832 at Abbotsford, the home he hadbuilt on the Scottish Borders.

GERARD CARRUTHERS is Francis Hutcheson Chair of Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, and the editor of the Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets Scottish Poems and Robert Burns.

No biography available for this author.

Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh in 1850. The son of a prosperous civil engineer, he was expected to follow the family profession but was finally allowed to study law at Edinburgh University. Stevenson reacted forcibly against the Presbyterianism of both his city's professional classes and his devout parents, but the influence of Calvinism on his childhood informed the fascination with evil that is so powerfully explored in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Stevenson suffered from a severe respiratory disease from his twenties onwards, leading him to settle in the gentle climate of Samoa with his American wife, Fanny Osbourne.

Margaret Oliphant (1828-97) was born in Wallyford, near Edinburgh. Her first novel, Passages in the Life of Margaret Maitland (1849), achieved some success and was followed two years later with further novels. She began contributing to magazines including Blackwoods, for whom she was to write hundreds of short stories, essays, articles and serialised novels such as Katie Stewart (1853). Some of Oliphant's most powerful stories are her supernatural tales, compiled in A Beleaguered City and Other Tales of the Seen and Unseen (1885).

John Buchan was born in Perth in 1875, the son of a Scottish Presbyterian minister, and educated at Glasgow. He gained a first at Oxford University, where he began writing, producing two volumes of essays, four novels and two collections of stories and poems before the age of twenty-five. He worked briefly as a lawyer, then served as a private secretary in the colonial administration of South Africa after the Boer War. During the war he worked both as a journalist and at Britain's War Propaganda Bureau, eventually becoming Director of Information. He published his most popular novel, The Thirty-Nine Steps, in 1915, and it has never since been out of print. In 1935 Buchan was elevated to the peerage, becoming Baron Tweedmuir of Elsfield, and later that year was appointed Governor General of Canada by King George V. He died on 11 February 1940.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born on 22 May 1859 in Edinburgh. He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh and began to write stories while he was a student.Over his life he produced more than thirty books, 150 short stories, poems, plays and essays across a wide range of genres. His most famous creation is the detective Sherlock Holmes, who he introduced in his first novel A Study in Scarlet (1887). This was followed in 1889 by an historical novel, Micah Clarke. In 1893 Conan Doyle published 'The Final Problem' in which he killed off his famous detective so that he could turn his attention more towards historical fiction. However Holmes was so popular that Conan Doyle eventually relented and published The Hound of the Baskervilles in 1901. The events of the The Hound of the Baskervilles are set before those of 'The Final Problem' but in 1903 new Sherlock Holmes stories began to appear that revealed that the detective had not died after all. He was finally retired in 1927. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle died on 7 July 1930. Arthur Conan Doyle was born on 22 May 1859 in Edinburgh into a prosperous Irish family. He trained as a doctor, gaining his degree from Edinburgh University in 1881. He worked as a surgeon on a whaling boat and also as a medical officer on a steamer travelling between Liverpool and West Africa. He then settled in Portsmouth on the English south coast and divided his time between medicine and writing. Sherlock Holmes made his first appearance in A Study of Scarlet, published in 'Beeton's Christmas Annual' in 1887. Its success encouraged Conan Doyle to write more stories involving Holmes but, in 1893, Conan Doyle killed off Holmes, hoping to concentrate on more serious writing. A public outcry later made him resurrect Holmes. In addition, Conan Doyle wrote a number of other novels, including The Lost World and various non-fictional works. These included a pamphlet justifying Britain's involvement in the Boer War, for which he was knighted and histories of the Boer War and World War One, in which his son, brother and two of his nephews were killed. Conan Doyle also twice ran unsuccessfully for parliament. In later life he became very interested in spiritualism. Conan Doyle died of a heart attack on 7 July 1930.

Muriel Spark was born and educated in Edinburgh. She wrote poetry, stories, biographies, and a remarkable series of novels. She won countless awards, was made an an honorary member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and in 1993 was given an OBE. She died in April 2006.

IRVINE WELSH is the best-selling author of Trainspotting, Ecstasy, Glue, Porno, Filth, Marabou Stork Nightmares, The Acid House, Skagboys, and, most recently,The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins. He currently lives in Chicago, IL.

Ali Smith is a teacher and author, born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. Ali’s life-long study of yoga, meditation, and mindfulness has served as the impetus for his pioneering work bringing trauma-informed yoga and mindfulness to underserved youth–and influencing education curriculum worldwide. He is the longtime Executive Director of the Holistic Life Foundation, a non-profit organization he co-founded in 2001 that brings yoga and mindfulness to schools and is the Co-Owner of The Involution Group, founded in 2019. Let Your Light Shine is his second book. Learn more at www.LetYourLightShineBook.com