The Association for Scottish
Literary Studies



ASLS Annual Volumes

The Cottagers of Glenburnie
and other educational writing

by Elizabeth Hamilton; ed. Pam Perkins
ASLS Annual Volume 38 – 2008
First published in 1808, The Cottagers of Glenburnie is a lively and entertaining tale, with vivid depictions – and biting satires – of Scottish peasant life. It also skilfully discusses and dissects class issues, British imperialism, and war.
 
The Cottagers of Glenburnie Pbk: £9.95
Hbk: £25.00

 
Scottish People’s Theatre
Plays by Glasgow Unity Writers

ed. Bill Findlay
ASLS Annual Volume 37 – 2007
Glasgow Unity Theatre was perhaps the most celebrated and influential of mid-twentieth century Scottish theatre companies, with strong theatrical and political styles and commitments. This new publication allows five of their most important works to be read together, for the first time, and seen fully in the context of their period and influence:
  • ‘The Gorbals Story’ by Robert McLeish
  • ‘Men Should Weep’ by Ena Lamont Stewart
  • ‘Gold in his Boots’ by George Munro
  • ‘The Lambs of God’ by Benedick Scott
  • ‘All in Good Faith’ by Roddy McMillan
Scottish People's Theatre:
Plays by Glasgow Unity Writers Pbk: £12.50
Hbk: £25.00

 
Voices From Their Ain Countrie
The Poems of Marion Angus and Violet Jacob

ed. Katherine Gordon
ASLS Annual Volume 36 – 2006
2006 marks the 60th anniversary of the deaths of two significant 20th-century Scottish poets: Marion Angus and Violet Jacob. Passionate and radical, lyrical and rich in human experience, the poems of Marion Angus and Violet Jacob will delight and captivate. More than 200 poems are included in this comprehensive anthology, along with an overview of each poet’s life, a short synopsis of major themes in their poetry, and notes on individual poems, providing an invaluable critical background for a full appreciation of their work.
 
Voices From Their Ain Countrie:
The Poems of Marion Angus and Violet Jacob Pbk: £9.95
Hbk: £25.00

 
The Devil to Stage
Five Plays by James Bridie

ed. Gerard Carruthers
ASLS Annual Volume 35 – 2005
James Bridie is one of Scotland’s greatest playwrights, and one of the leading British dramatists of the 20th century. This collection of five acting scripts has been thoroughly corected and re-set, and brings some of Bridie’s greatest works back into the public domain:
  • ‘The Sunlight Sonata’ (1928)
  • ‘The Anatomist’ (1930)
  • ‘A Sleeping Clergyman’ (1933)
  • ‘Mr Bolfry’ (1943)
  • ‘Daphne Laureola’ (1949)
The Devil to Stage:
Five Plays by James Bridie Pbk: £12.50
Hbk: £25.00

 
Serving Twa Maisters
Five Classic Plays in Scots Translation

ed. John Corbett & Bill Findlay
ASLS Annual Volume 34 – 2004
The 1940s saw the birth of a modern tradition for translating drama into Scots. These translations helped place the vernacular at the heart of post-war Scottish drama. Serving Twa Maisters contains five classic works in this tradition:
  • ‘Let Wives Tak Tent’ by Robert Kemp from Molière (1948)
  • ‘The Burdies’ by Douglas Young from Aristophanes (1959)
  • ‘The Servant o’ Twa Maisters’ by Victor Carin from Goldoni (1965)
  • ‘The Hypochondriak’ by Hector MacMillan from Molière (1987)
  • ‘Mr Puntila and his Man Matti’ by Peter Arnott from Brecht (1999)
Serving Twa Maisters:
Five Classic Plays in Scots Translation Pbk: £12.50
Hbk: £25.00

 
Modernism and Nationalism
Literature & Society in Scotland 1918–1939

ed. Margery Palmer McCulloch
ASLS Annual Volume 33 – 2003
An invaluable collection of source material for the 20th-century Scottish literary renaissance. Through excepts from periodicals, books, letters and other documents, Modernism & Nationalism brings us the voices of writers such as MacDiarmid, Gunn, Linklater, Compton Mackenzie, Naomi Mitchison, Edwin and Willa Muir, Catherine Carswell and many others, reviewing literary, social economic and political issues and providing new insights into the ideas behind the creative explosion of the period.
 
Modernism and Nationalism:
Literature and Society in Scotland 1918-1939 Pbk: £12.50
Hbk: £25.00

 
Clan-Albin
A National Tale

Christian Isobel Johnstone; ed. Andrew Monnickendam
ASLS Annual Volume 32 – 2002
Written in 1815, the year of Waterloo, Clan-Albin is an extraordinary Romantic novel which communicates the horrors and tragedies of war. Although the story ranges from Scotland to Ireland to Spain following the adventures of a young soldier, it is the voices of the strong female characters that we hear most clearly.
 
Clan-Albin:
a national tale Pbk: £8.95
Hbk: £25.00

 
Dàin do Eimhir
Poems to Eimhir

Sorley MacLean; ed. Christopher Whyte
ASLS Annual Volume 31 – 2001
Winner of the 2002 Saltire Society/National Library of Scotland Research Book of the Year award
Widely regarded as his greatest achievement, MacLean’s cycle of love lyrics Dàin do Eimhir was only published in part in his lifetime; this edition includes six previously unpublished poems. With facing English translations throughout, Christopher Whyte’s authoritative and extensive commentaries help make a major masterpiece of 20th-century European literature fully available to the general public for the first time.
 
Dàin do Eimhir:
Poems to Eimhir OUT OF PRINT
 
Sir David Lyndsay: Selected Poems
ed. Janet Hadley Williams
ASLS Annual Volume 30 – 2000
In the late sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a literate Scots household was likely to own two books: the Bible and the poems of Sir David Lyndsay. This collection is both an accessible introduction to new readers, for whom there are on-the-page annotations and references, and a valuable resource for specialists, who will wish to work with freshly-established texts. The explanatory notes illustrate the richness of Lyndsay’s language and those contemporary references now less known. An Introduction provides biographical information and discusses important features of Lyndsay’s poetry, and a full Bibliography offers further support for scholars.
 
Sir David Lyndsay:
Selected Poems Pbk: £12.50
Hbk: £25.00

 
The Scotswoman at Home and Abroad
Non-Fiction Writing 1700–1900

ed. Dorothy McMillan
ASLS Annual Volume 29 – 1999
Practical or whimsical, written for pleasure or for publication and profit, the extracts in this remarkable anthology provide a vivid cross-section of half of Scotland’s culture from 1700 to 1900, using texts that have fallen out of print and including some previously unpublished material. Issues of class, gender and society are boldly illustrated, and the private and public life of the times can be read out of these works in ways that would not perhaps be possible from male writing of the period.
 
The Scotswoman at Home and Abroad Hbk: £12.50
 
The Poems of William Dunbar
ed. Priscilla Bawcutt (in two volumes)
ASLS Annual Volumes 27 & 28 – 1997 & 1998
Winner of the 1999 Saltire Society/National Library of Scotland Research Book of the Year award
Priscilla Bawcutt’s edition of the poems of William Dunbar, the greatest Scottish poet of the sixteenth century, is an essential reference for all students of Scottish literature. As well as freshly established texts of every poem, this edition contains a full introduction, a complete listing of textual variants in all the early manuscripts and printings, extensive notes, a glossary and a list of sources and secondary material.
 
The Poems of William Dunbar 2-volume set
Hbk: £30.00

 
The Christis Kirk Tradition
Scots Poems of Folk Festivity

ed. Allan H MacLaine
ASLS Annual Volume 26 – 1996
An anthology of twenty poems, ranging from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, from a vivid tradition of Scottish poetry describing all kinds of revelry, ribaldry, brawling and bungling. The loose narrative, based on the actions of rapidly-sketched characters, is swift-paced and full of robust movement and details. Each poem is presented with on-the-page glosses for ease of understanding, and with full introductions and notes.
 
The Christis Kirk Tradition:
Scots Poems of Folk Festivity Hbk: £12.50
 
Flemington
Violet Jacob; ed. Carol Anderson
ASLS Annual Volume 24 – 1994
John Buchan described Flemington as ‘the best Scots romance since The Master of Ballantrae’. Set in and around Montrose on the east coast of Scotland, Flemington is a gripping historical novel of action and intrigue in the aftermath of the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, in which powerful characters are driven against each other by the political turmoil of their times.
 
Flemington Hbk: £9.95
 
The Tavern Sages
Selections from the Noctes Ambrosianae

ed. J. H. Alexander
ASLS Annual Volumes 22, 1992
From 1822 until 1835 Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine carried a series of seventy-one (largely) imaginary conversations between leading figures of the time: they are uninhibited, frequently scurrilous, often imaginative and extremely funny. Among the host of topics covered in this selection are the contemporaneous literary, artistic and political scenes, the 1822 visit of George IV to Edinburgh, swimming in the Firth of Forth, and gargantuan feastings and potations. Comprehensive explanatory notes are provided to allow the modern reader to appreciate the subtleties, as well as the broad humour, of the pieces.
 
The Tavern Sages:
Selections from the Noctes Ambrosianae Hbk: £9.95
 
The Complete Poems of Edwin Muir
ed. Peter Butter
ASLS Annual Volumes 21, 1991
All the poetry published by Muir in his lifetime is collected in this volume, plus those works published after his death and a number of poems and versions of poems left out of previous collections. Professor Butter’s notes identify when each of Muir’s poems were written, and where. He quotes earlier versions and Muir’s own comments, in letters and notebooks, on his poetry, its genesis and meaning.
 
The Complete Poems of Edwin Muir OUT OF PRINT
 
The Youth and Manhood of Cyril Thornton
Thomas Hamilton; ed. Maurice Lindsay
ASLS Annual Volumes 20, 1990
First published in 1827, The Youth and Manhood of Cyril Thornton provides a vivid evocation of life in Glasgow, and of life in the old Glasgow University, just before the Industrial Revolution. It is on the whole a warmly sympathetic portrait, though Scots foibles, as pertinent today as they were nearly two centuries ago, are gently satirised. The novel also gives an account of the confusion and futility which characterises all wars, as experienced during the earlier part of the Peninsular campaign, in which the author was a serving officer.
 
The Youth and Manhood of
Cyril Thornton Hbk: £9.95
 
The Comic Poems of William Tennant
ed. Maurice Lindsay & Alexander Scott
ASLS Annual Volumes 19, 1989
William Tennant (1784–1848) was the author of Anster Fair, one of the most popular comic poems of the nineteenth century. Couched in the Italian ottava rima stanza, it is thought that Byron may have adopted the stanza-form, including the far-fetched rhyme-scheme, for, among other poems, Beppo and Don Juan. In addition to Anster Fair, this volume includes Papistry Storm’d, a humourous account of the Knoxian mob-attack on the Cathedral of St Andrews, together with some examples of Tennant’s shorter pieces in Scots.
 
The Comic Poems of William Tennant Hbk: £8.95
 


Suggestions for titles for our Annual Volumes series should be made via our on-line Proposal Form. (PDF format — requires Adobe Acrobat Reader. If you do not already have a copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader, you can download it free from Adobe’s home-page.)

Last updated 5 February 2010