An engaging and authoritative history of Scotland's influence in the world and the world's on Scotland, from the Thirty Years' War to the present dayScotland is one of the oldest nations in the world, yet by some it is hardly counted as a nation at all. Neither a colony of England nor a fully equal partner in the British union, Scotland has often been seen as simply a component part of British history. But the story of Scotland is one of innovation, exploration, res...

Scottish and Irish Romanticism is the first single-author book to address the main non-English Romanticisms of the British Isles. Murray Pittock begins by questioning the terms of his chosen title as he searches for a definition of Romanticism and for the meaning of 'national literature'. He proposes certain determining 'triggers' for the recognition of the presence of a national literature, and also deals with two major problems which are holding back the development of a new and...

Is the United Kingdom really as united as its name might suggest? For many people in the UK, increasing nationalism in Scotland raises serious questions about what the UK is, and where its future lies. In The Road to Independence?, now available in a revised and expanded Second Edition, Murray Pittock not only gives an account of modern Scottish nationalism, but explains what Scotland’s role in Britain has been historically and why it has changed radically in the last 50 years, wi...

Robert Burns has been a key figure in Scottish identity globally since his death in 1796. But he has always been much more than that. In America, his admirers have included Emerson, President Lincoln, Maya Angelou and many others, for Burns was long held to be a friend to the American way of life, an opponent of kings and tyranny, and someone who proved that the values that built the United States were not extinct in Europe. In Europe itself, Burns was seen as both an authentic voice of th...

READ IN A DAY. REMEMBER FOR A LIFETIMEScotland is one of the oldest nations in Europe. Its territory remains fundamentally unchanged since the fifteenth century, and its southern border with England has barely altered since 1237. And yet Scotland – a country with a global brand, its own law, education and church – is not a state at all. In The Shortest History of Scotland, Murray Pittock argues that this very ambiguity is what has made the nation a central ...

The 1890s, the Naughty Nineties, was an exciting and flamboyant time in British life and literature. First published in 1993, this title traces the genesis of the literary culture of the 1890s through some of the popular novels and literary texts of the period. By examining works by such writers as Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, W. B. Yeats, and Walter Pater, Murray Pittock analyses the nature of the ‘Decadent era’ and the artistic theories of Symbolism and Aestheticism. Significantly, he provi...

Is the ‘United’ Kingdom really as united as its name might suggest? For many people in the UK, increasing nationalism in Scotland raises serious questions about what Britain is, and where its future lies. In The Road to Independence?, Murray Pittock not only gives an account of modern Scottish nationalism, but also explains what Scotland’s role in Britain has been historically, and why it has changed radically in the last fifty years, with the debate about independence coming to t...

This 2004 volume offers an introduction to British literature that challenges the traditional divide between eighteenth-century and Romantic studies. Contributors explore the development of literary genres and modes through a period of rapid change. They show how literature was shaped by historical factors including the development of the book trade, the rise of literary criticism and the expansion of commercial society and empire. The first part of the volume focuses on broad themes inclu...

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'There was nothing extraordinary about my childhood or background. And yet I looked in vain for any aspect of my family's story when I went to university to read history, and continued to search fruitlessly for it throughout the next decade. Eventually I realised I would have to write this history myself.'What was it really like to live through the twentieth century? In 1910 three-quarters of the populati...

On 18 September 2014, Scots will decide their future: should the country quit the United Kingdom and take control of its own destiny, or should it remain part of what advocates call the most successful political and economic union of modern times? Everyone in the country has a stake in this decision. Now, in this fascinating and insightful new book, David Torrance charts the countdown to the big day, weaving his way through a minefield of claim and counterclaim, and knocking down fictions ...

Seamus Heaney is a unique phenomenon in contemporary literature, as a poet whose individual volumes (such as his Beowulf translation, and individual volumes of poems such as Electric Light and District and Circle) have been high in the bestseller lists for decades. Since winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, he has come to be considered one of the most important English language poets in the world. This Companion gives an overview of his career and of his reception in Ireland, England an...