The International Companion to the Scottish Novel Quotes

“As the origin of the discipline of geology, and as one of the oldest landmasses on earth, Scotland is emblematic of the ancient forces by which the earth has been shaped long before the advent of humanity and its belief in the progress of history.”
― Cairns Craig, The International Companion to the Scottish Novel

“The case of Ballantyne's The Coral Island is instructive, for the author had never seen a coral island, or, indeed, a palm tree, or a coconut, and his novel is a construction out of his reading of other books, some of which are pillaged to the point of plagarism. The textual bricolage is matched by the ironic presentation of the imperial values which it is generally assumed the book exists to promote: a pirate by the name of 'Bloody Bill' is allowed to articulate how useful religion is to the advancement of trade (and plunder).”
― Fiona McCulloch, The International Companion to the Scottish Novel

“Carswell's novels, Open the Door! (1920) and The Camomile (1922) sit both inside and outside the school of urban fiction. While the spaces of Glasgow thrum in their pages and are - as is frequent in other urban fiction - characterised by their contrast with alternative locales, interest in the city is also aesthetic. Glasgow here is also a city of artistic sensibilities and aspirations, of the avant-garde”
― Glenda Norquay, The International Companion to the Scottish Novel

“In the complexity of its structure, its kaleidoscope of perspectives, its confrontation with the effects of the First World War, its attentiveness to experience at all life stages and it embrace of linguistic, formal and philosophical 'difficulty', The Weatherhouse is arguably the great Scottish modernist feminist novel of the period.”
― Glenda Norquay, The International Companion to the Scottish Novel

“In both Marriage and Inheritance Ferrier reaffirms national identity differences between Scotland and England by deliberately bifurcating characters and settings between the two nations. Even her very titles - Marriage, Inheritance, Destiny - project a telescoping of the national tale whereby the 'culminating acts of union become frought with unresolved tensions, leading to prolonged courtship complications, to marital crisis, and even to national divorce'. We would do well to reconsider Ferrier's relegation to a lesser novelist working in the shadow of Austen.”
― Charles Snodgrass, The International Companion to the Scottish Novel

“Time changed for the Romantics. Whether from the rise of industrialism that made visible the accelerating edge of the Anthropocene, from the contrasting awareness of geological time, the effects of accurate time-keeping, or the collapse of time and space made possible by steam travel, their period's momentum seemed resolutely forward, while at the same time operating 'in widely varying scales, paces and planes'. That change came early for Scots, who numbered among them Watt, of the steam engine (1765), and Hutton, who published the seminal Theory of the Earth (1788). For Walter Scott, who belonged to the Royal Society of Edinburgh from 1810 and served as its President from 1820, that society having published Hutton's theory, and who knew Watt personally, time's many turns would have been particularly evident.”
― Caroline McCracken-Flesher, The International Companion to the Scottish Novel

“Humphrey Clinker provides an enlightenment survey of Scotland, its landscape, sociability, industry, and progress, while at a fictional level, it places Scotland as the harbinger of returned health and vigor.”
― Aileen Douglas, The International Companion to the Scottish Novel