The International Companion to the Scottish Novel

Are novelists from Scotland, even internationally influential ones like Walter Scott or Muriel Spark, merely contributors to a wider English literature, or is there a separate and specific tradition of the Scottish novel that gives meaning and significance to their work? This INTERNATIONAL COMPANION assesses the work of Scottish novelists – writing in English, Scots and Gaelic – as contributions to national self-understanding and to a distinctive evolution of the most influential genre of the modern world. Tracing the development of the Scottish novel from the eighteenth century to the present day, and ranging from self-conscious experimentation to popular, mass-market fiction, it evaluates responses by critics, and critical responses by the novelists themselves, to reveal a sustained engagement with national identity and literary form.