Scotland and the 19th-Century World

Reviews / Votes

"Reciprocal haunting is what this book achieves... The volume celebrates Douglas Gifford, and he continues his many contributions to the study of Scottish literature with an opening chapter that at once seems haunted by the critical past, yet determined to move on. The Kailyard still takes its knocks, but Gifford cracks open the canon he helped establish in the 1988 History of Scottish Literature to reveal a cornucopia of alternate authors, texts, and critical perspectives." - Caroline McCracken-Flesher, University of Wyoming, in: The Bottle Imp
"One of the most striking things about this volume is its matter-of-fact comparativism, an approach that both evokes and helps establish a 'new' Scottish studies that is introspective without seeming introverted. The editors' excellent introductory chapter, for example, rebuts the 'old' narrative of the "wasteland" of nineteenth-century [Scottish] literature', while the insightful chapter that follows, by Douglas Gifford, sets forth a revisionist account of the famed 'Scottish Renaissance' that paints a picture of a complementary rather than (more stereotypically) antagonistic relationship between the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries." - Matthew Wickman, Brigham Young University, Utah, in: Scottish Literary Review 5/2 (2013), pp. 127-9
"This book is innovative and rigorously researched with an animated introduction. [...] The volume considers exchanges between Scotland and America, Europe, Africa, and Asia, looking not only at reciprocal cultural influences but also at what literary constructions reveal about the nature of Scottish society." - Valerie Wallace, Victoria University of Wellington, in Victorian Studies 56/3 Spring (2014), pp. 571-573