Canongate Classics

August 2005: The Best Scottish Book of All Time was announced at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

From a list of over one hundred classic and contemporary Scottish books, Lewis Grassic Gibbon's Sunset Song was voted by the public as the finest book to have ever been written by a Scottish author.

Chosen as the overall winner from a diverse range of books – including Trainspotting; the King James Bible; The Wasp Factory; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Garnethill; Whisky Galore; The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency; and Harry Potter – Sunset Song proved to be a timeless classic, one which readers consistently return to and adore.

The Best Scottish Book of All Time is just one example of the relevance of the Scottish canon in the twenty-first century. As debatable and as hard to quantify as any canon (whether it be literature, religion or philosophy), the 100 titles published in the Canongate Classics series represent the Scottish Canon in its fullest glory – from Walter Scott to Robert Burns; Margaret Oliphant to Naomi Mitchison; George Mackay Brown to Thomas Carlyle; Arthur Conan Doyle to Robert Louis Stevenson; and James Boswell to Lewis Grassic Gibbon.

The Canongate Classics series was created in 1987, with the hundredth title published in 2002 (a reissue of Alisdair Gray's opus Lanark). March 2006 marked the relaunch of the Canongate Classics, bringing a fresh new look to ensure the Scottish canon continues to appeal to new and even wider readerships. Lewis Grassic Gibbon's Sunset Song, Elizabeth Grant's Memoirs of a Highland Lady and St Kilda by Charles Maclean were reissued with updated jacket designs and introductions, injecting a renewed sense of vigour and enthusiasm for the series.

The success of the Canongate Classics has been attributed to the inclusion of books often deemed as 'popular', alongside books which may be less famous (in main due to neglect rather than due to inferiority). Supported by the Scottish Arts Council, the titles included in the Classics series are recommended by an independent advisory board, chaired by Professor Rory Watson (lecturer in English at Stirling University). The mission of the series is:

A small sample of reviews for just a few of the books in the Canongate Classics series:

Life of Burns - Catherine Carswell
"She wrote Burns as a character and that character as a reality. Behind the tartan heresy that has been perpetrated upon the man's memory, behind the poet's own bravura, sexual allure and talent, [Carswell] saw a Burns also isolated and vulnerable, a poet tormented as much as fired by his own talent. A work of redefinition." Janice Galloway, Scotland on Sunday

The Triumph Tree – Thomas Clancy
"No self-respecting Scottish bookshelf should be without this scholarly and uplifting book." The Herald

The Man Who Wanted to Smell Books – Elspeth Davie
"Davie's short stories - are quietly unsettling visions of the absurdities of everyday life. A writer who could cut any flowery raconteur down to size, a no-nonsense Calvinist with a painter's eye for detail and yet another Scottish literary talent long overdue for re-appraisal" The Scotsman

A Glasgow Trilogy - George Friel
"The pioneering Glasgow novelist who prepared the terrain for James Kelman and Alasdair Gray... A Glasgow Trilogy is cause for celebration: an important Scottish writer has been returned to circulation." TLS

Sunset Song – Lewis Grassic Gibbon
"This book may be read with delight the world over." New York Times
"[Sunset Song's] great gripping hybrid of melodrama and realism ... left me scorched." Ali Smith
"One of the great Scottish classics and one which I think does Scotland proud. It is a brilliant transition novel which shows the movement from peasant farming life to the modern world." Richard Holloway, Scotland on Sunday

A Scots Quair – Lewis Grassic Gibbon
"It's hard to exaggerate the originality, invention and influence of Gibbon's trilogy." Ian Jack, Scotland on Sunday

Smeddum - Lewis Grassic Gibbon
"Arguably the finest Scottish author of the 20th century... Gibbon is seen as the man who immortalised the distinctive speech and culture of his native north east Scotland." Socialist Review

Memoirs of a Highland Lady - Elizabeth Grant
"A masterpiece of historical and personal recall." Scotsman
"As valuable for entertainment as for historical record." Sunday Times
"It gives a sweeping insight into the life of a Speyside lady, but it is more than that too, for it has a real warmth and literary style." Aberdeen Press & Journal

Growing Up in the West - J.F. Hendry, Tom Gallacher, Gordon M. Williams and Edwin Muir
"They the deserve to be read, not just for the stories they tell, the images they evoke, the themes they explore, but because of their glittering literary quality which, in my opinion, eclipses much of what passes for fiction today." Elizabeth Sutherland, The Scots Magazine

The New Testament in Scots – Robin Lorimer
"The forthright manner of the ideal Church of Scotland minister owes much to the plain-spokenness of Jesus Christ himself; it is fitting, therefore, to have his saying and the accounts of his actions rendered into a guid braid Scots - Jesus, after all, must have spoken something like a guid braid Galilee." Times Literary Supplement

Island On The Edge of the World: The Story of St Kilda – Charles Maclean
"What the St Kildian story, as told by Maclean, did for me was to reawaken my awe at the strangeness of our world." Will Self
"A story like a marvellous pebble, wet from the sea, strange and comic like all things out of step with time, sad as the old songs the women sang, splendidly told..." Sunday Times

A Beleaguered City – Margaret Oliphant
"Just right for curling up with on spooky wintry evenings ... a modern reading reveals an added edge in her quiet subversion of the Victorian attitude to women." The Scotsman

The Journal of Sir Walter Scott – Sir Walter Scott
"Scott's Journal is a hugely important piece of Scottish, and indeed European literature ... It confirms the very welcome trend of an increasingly heavyweight catalogue of Canongate Classics ... Walter Scott has never been so readable." The Herald

Queen of Science – Mary Somerville
"A fascination glimpse into the life and mind of a woman who would have been remarkable in any age." Yorkshire Post

Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson
"A cracking tale of low skulduggery and high adventure, Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped has enthralled generations of readers since its first publication in 1886. A book for thrill-seekers of all ages, this romp through Jacobite Scotland is a true classic. " Sunday Herald

The Makars – Jackie Tasioulis
"If we are to recover the cultural self-confidence of the first Scottish Renaissance and aspire to its achievements, then we must re-establish nourishing links with our past – and we cannot do better than go back to these three poets. It is a voyage of discovery and delight." The Scotsman

The People of the Sea – David Thomson
"Thomson blends Gaelic legend with glimpses of a way of life almost unchanged for centuries and on the verge of disappearing. People of Sea is a unique and beautiful literary achievement." The Observer

The King and the Lamp - Duncan Williamson
"A great way - for most of us the only way - to tune in to the authentic voice of Scottish folklore." Scots Magazine