Published on the occasion of Samuel Johnson's Tercentenary Year, this book analyses the structure and function of each literary allusion identified in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775). Johnson's familiarity with the classics and other literatures is thereby manifested in a variety of ways, with a powerful personal voice and, no less important, looking for reader involvement. Allusion, as contended in this monograph, is indeed an integral part of the formal artistry and intellectual depth of the Journey, thus contributing to making Johnson's Scottish travelogue what it is - a major exponent of Travel Literature. Dr Agustín Coletes Blanco teaches translation and travel writing at the University of Oviedo in Spain. He is also an honorary research fellow of Hull University in Britain. He has published widely on literary and cultural reception and on British travellers in Northern Spain. He is the editor and Spanish translator of Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and of Byron's Mediterranean Letters and Poems.

Literary Allusion in Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland

Literature & Fiction

Agustin Coletes Blanco

History & Criticism

The Grimsay Press

A history of a single kin group, expanding from an Anglo-Norman whose seal is on the Ragman Roll 1296, to 150-odd families of the mid-19th century - a different approach from most family histories written backwards from a present day single unit. Novel aspects include: • The concept of an "expanding historical torrent" and the importance of kinship in ensuring survival over the long-term. • Local history (Roxburghshire and Berwickshire, East and Middle Marches) from the Earls of Douglas to the Age of Improvement as a camera obscura, giving a comprehensible slant to wider Scottish history over 600 years. • Lairdship over time, changing lifestyle, nature of land holding, farming, occupations, tower houses, etc. • Social metamorphosis and decline, fragmentation of laird class, younger sons, urban middle class merchants, professionals and artisans, as well as agricultural workers. • Migration and the pressures which caused it, rural to urban, Scotland to northern England, and overseas. • Sense of identity: what kinship and the name (under several spellings) and the transition from the old church to the new kirk conveyed in the context of Border locality; Scotland and Scottishness, then Britishness and the Empire to World War I.

Kinship and Survival: The Middlemas Name through 600 Years

History

MIDDLEMAS, Keith

Europe

Drumlanrig Castle, the clan seat of the Douglases of Queensberry, is a very modern edifice, in terms of this old and influential border family, as they trace their roots far into the archaeological record of the Scottish nation. Rather than tackle the end of the family spectrum represented by the infamous Archibald the Grim, this book chooses to consider instead the intimate and, at times, almost symbiotic relationship between clan and landscape. An examination of both the historical and archaeological heritage of the region, while also exploring those many thriving communities which existed at the time of writing (1876), this book gives an attention to local detail, coupled with the genealogy of the Douglases, which makes it an invaluable resource. More than one hundred years after the original publication, many of these small townships, and the relationships they fostered, have ceased to exist and have been almost entirely forgotten. Craufurd Tait Ramage, was, during his lifetime, a writer of some repute. Initially tutor to the family of the first Baron Monteagle, he was later appointed to the Rectorship of Wallace Hall Academy in Dumfries.

Drumlanrig Castle and the Douglases: with the early history and ancient remains of Durisdeer, Closeburn, and Morton (1876)

Ramage, Crawfurd Tate

World Literature

"This little volume makes no pretension to any literary merit, but seeks merely to supply, in handy form, a list of places of outstanding historical interest in the Counties-of Dumfries, Kirkcudbright, and Wigtown, and to give brief notes concerning them in connection with historic events in which each played a part, which may prove of service to visitors to this portion of the Borders, and to the public in general." - From the preface.

Historic Gleanings in Three Famous Border Counties - Dumfries, Kirkcudbright and Wigtown (1911)

Dixie, George Douglas

A Topographical Dictionary of Scotland comprising the several counties, islands, cities, burgh and market towns, parishes and principal villages, with ... engravings of the seals and arms of the di

Lewis, Samuel

Constantly reflective and amusing, Gyles Longley reveals a life more influenced by the unexpected than seems reasonable. After a happy childhood and adolescence in Kent, his working life began in 1936. Crystal Palace burned down, and the next day Gyles started work in London with the company from which he would years later retire as the Managing Director of its business in France. In between we read of his wartime experience as a soldier and officer, his fulfilling professional career with Gestetner, the decades of public service and, above all, of his long years of happiness with Ginette. As Gyles explains, the story's title reflects the realisation of his eighteen year old self that his future employment was in his own hands. In his words, 'someone with little baggage can - with luck - end up with a few Louis Vuitton pieces'.

To Hell with That! or the Life of Oliver Gyles Longley, C.B.E., M.C.

Biographies & Memoirs

Longley, Oliver Gyles

Leaders & Notable People

First published between 1896 and 1904, the three volumes by Archibald Macdonald of Kiltarlity and Angus Macdonald of Killearnan have become the key history and reference of the Clan, its origins and influence in the Western Highlands and Isles, and its part in national history. This is Volume 2 of a new three Volume paperback reprint of the original work in full, with errata corrected.

The Clan Donald - Volume 2

MacDonald, Angus

MacDonald, Archibald

Historical Study & Educational Resources

This collection of sketches was first published in 1898, the outcome of the English author's 'interesting holiday tramps and leisure hours from business'. It was to excite a desire in the hearts of his countrymen 'to visit the borderland between England and Scotland, haunted by legend, romance, tradition and ballad lore'.

A Thousand Miles of Wandering in the Border Country (1898)

Bogg, Edmund

"When we left Minneapolis, we were in high hopes of having a grand and glorious trip, for none of us had ever been on the water before, and it was a blessed thing we did not know some of the narrow escapes and trials we were to have. However, we got as far as Alton all in good health and strength, having gone through many anxious times, and we sincerely thanked the Lord who had watched over us, a lot of land peo¬ple with no experience as to what a really grand and mighty waters the great Mississippi is." Eliza Oddy, a teenager, wrote this remarkable account of the courage, hard work, determination and friendships that sustained the Oddy family during their seven months travelling down river on a small houseboat.   Introduced by Andrew Hook, with an overview of the political and engineering efforts made to improve the navigation of the Mississippi in the nineteenth-century, and of the economic changes that may have influenced migration along it, the Diary is supplemented with a gazetteer of the locations described by Eliza. Also included are an account of the same section of the river by Mark Twain - the Mississippi's most famous steamboat pilot, illustrations of contemporary working boats, and the intriguing detail of Eliza's 1910 US patent for a window sash lock.   The final part of the story is told by a descendant, Heather Eggins, in a short, illustrated family history. It reminds the reader that the Diary is one part of a bigger journey made by a working class family who emigrated from industrial Leeds, Yorkshire, in 1881 and finally settled in Alton, Illinois in 1895, in 'a place where their American dream of a better life could at last be realized'.

A Mississippi Diary: From St Paul, Minnesota to Alton, Illinois, October 1894 to May 1895

Oddy, Eliza

Americas

My Vermonters: The Northeast Kingdom 1800-1940

A reflection, in chapters, on the lives of members of the author's family, their friends and neighbours who lived in the counties of Orleans and Caledonia between the end of the eighteenth and the middle of the twentieth centuries. Hard-working, God-fearing, and often clever, these were literate, respectable, and fairly well-off folks. They were, also, all too human - and certainly not always 'nice' or 'admirable'. The history that spills out from this archive - of documents, letters and postcards, diaries, photographs, and oral history - encompasses family tales, curses and scandals; working lives of farmers, store-keepers and merchants, and railway men; education, teenage life, and courtship; building homes and becoming consumers; serving in the militia and in war; early tourism, and local entertainments; with a discursion on Vermont family names along the way. It is a fascinating story, generously illustrated with reproductions of documents and photographs.

Emerson, Roger Lee

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