James Leslie Mitchell (1901–1935), better known as Lewis Grassic Gibbon, was born on this day, 13 Feb. Author of SUNSET SONG – & many other titles from historical to science fiction – he is one of the most important Scottish writers of the 20th century.
A 🎂 🧵 …
1/10
#Scottish #literature #modernism #20thcentury #HistoricalFiction #ScienceFiction #LewisGrassicGibbon
“The ambiguity of authority & reliability in narration, in Scots or English, is central to Hogg, Galt, Stevenson, many others, but in Gibbon’s trilogy it is utterly deconstructed”
—Alan Riach: the influence of Gibbon on contemporary Scottish literature
2/10
https://www.thenational.scot/news/15550316.lewis-grassic-gibbon-uncovering-the-morning-star/
#Scottish #literature #modernism #20thcentury #HistoricalFiction #LewisGrassicGibbon
“Not only did he invent a sentence structure that works like breath through the body of the reader, & a kind of Scottish English that’s simultaneously rich & spare, but [A SCOTS QUAIR is] a formally stunning & cunning work of art”
—Ali Smith, writing in 2019
3/10
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jun/29/ali-smith-books-that-made-me
#Scottish #literature #modernism #20thcentury #HistoricalFiction #Scots #Scotslanguage #LewisGrassicGibbon
SUNSET SONG: a Scottish Gift to German Readers
Regina Erich compares the original German translation of Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s A SCOTS QUAIR trilogy, published in the GDR between 1970 & 1986, with its more recent republication in a unified Germany
4/10
https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2019/12/sunset-song-a-scottish-gift-to-german-readers/
#Scottish #literature #modernism #20thcentury #HistoricalFiction #translation #German #GDR #LewisGrassicGibbon
Scottish literature enjoys a wide international readership. Many Scottish authors, whether creators of classic novels or contemporary writers, have been translated into foreign languages. Germany is no exception to this. Walk into any German bookshop and you will find at least one book written by a Scot. Yet one great Scottish writer seemed to have […]
“SPARTACUS will be seen as one of his most enduring achievements, still vivid, still experimental, still burning with the anger he felt at the barbarous events of history”
Ian Campbell discusses James Leslie Mitchell’s brutal & unflinching novel SPARTACUS (1933)
5/10
https://asls.org.uk/james-leslie-mitchells-spartacus/
#Scottish #literature #modernism #20thcentury #HistoricalFiction #Rome #AncientRome #LewisGrassicGibbon #Spartacus
(I have always thought that the first sentence of James Leslie Mitchell’s SPARTACUS is up there with some of the great opening lines in literature …)
#Scottish #literature #modernism #20thcentury #HistoricalFiction #Rome #AncientRome #Spartacus #OpeningLines #LewisGrassicGibbon
“And so with the moderns”: The Role of the Revolutionary Writer and the Mythicization of History in J. Leslie Mitchell’s SPARTACUS
—Scott Lyall, CLOTHO 4/2 (2022)
6/10
https://journals.uni-lj.si/clotho/article/view/11511
#Scottish #literature #modernism #20thcentury #HistoricalFiction #Rome #AncientRome #Spartacus #LewisGrassicGibbon
Why Everybody Needs Smeddum
“The heroine, Meg Menzies, is Gibbon’s answer to Austen’s Mrs Bennet. In fact, she works as a kind of anti-Mrs Bennet”
—Graeme Trousdale on Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s classic short story “Smeddum”
7/10
https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2007/05/why-everybody-needs-smeddum/
#Scottish #literature #modernism #20thcentury #ShortStory #LewisGrassicGibbon
Lewis Grassic Gibbon‘s Smeddum, the tale of the Menzies family in rural north-east Scotland, is a beautifully crafted, and really satisfying short story. The word ‘smeddum’ means ‘spirit’, ‘determination’, ‘true grit’. That grit is now metaphorical, but the earliest recorded use of the word shows that smeodoma in Old English was used as a gloss for the Latin […]
SUNSET SONG
Currently on the iPlayer: the digitally restored 1971 BBC adaptation of the first part of Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s SCOTS QUAIR trilogy about a young girl’s intellectual & sexual development in rural north-east Scotland just before WW1
8/10
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m001bm9l/sunset-song
#Scottish #literature #modernism #20thcentury #HistoricalFiction #SunsetSong #LewisGrassicGibbon #drama #adaptation
Prof Scott Lyall discusses SUNSET SONG – a talk given at our Schools Conference in 2015
9/10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84NMdO47oy4&list=PLEP9HxY4X7WYcu-9sTwjGIqkJDYOImwgK
#Scottish #literature #modernism #20thcentury #HistoricalFiction #SunsetSong #LewisGrassicGibbon
The International Companion to Lewis Grassic Gibbon
ed. Scott Lyall
The best contemporary guide to Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s/James Leslie Mitchell’s literature, politics, life, & work – available in print or online via Project MUSE
10/10
https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/companions/ic1/
#Scottish #literature #modernism #20thcentury #HistoricalFiction #ScienceFiction #LewisGrassicGibbon
Assoc for Scottish Literature
