The Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland, Volume 4: Professionalism and Diversity 1880–2000 9780748628841

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THE EDINBURGH HISTORY OF THE BOOK IN SCOTLAND General Editor: Bill Bell University of Edinburgh WHETHER in the creation of early manuscripts, in the formation of libraries, through fine printing, or the development of mass media, Scotland’s contributions to the history of the book, both within the nation and beyond its boundaries, have been remarkable. Published in four volumes, The Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland brings together the work of leading scholars in the field in order to investigate the history of the Scottish book from earliest times to the present.

Volume 1: From the Earliest Times to 1707 Editors: Alastair Mann and Sally Mapstone Volume 2: Enlightenment and Expansion 1707–1800 Editors: Stephen Brown and Warren McDougall Volume 3: Ambition and Industry 1800–80 Editor: Bill Bell Volume 4: Professionalism and Diversity 1880–2000 Editors: David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery

ADVISORY BOARD

John Barnard, University of Leeds Jonquil Beavan, University of Edinburgh Iain Gordon Brown, National Library of Scotland Patricia Fleming, University of Toronto Douglas Gi≠ord, University of Glasgow Christopher Harvie, University of Tübingen Lotte Hellinga, British Library John Hench, American Antiquarian Society Brian Hillyard, National Library of Scotland Wallace Kirsop, Monash University Alasdair MacDonald, University of Groningen Bertrum MacDonald, Dalhousie University Keith Maslen, University of Otago Jane Millgate, University of Toronto Michael Moss, Glasgow University Library John Sutherland, University College, London I. R. Willison, University of London

T HE E DINBURGH H ISTORY OF THE B OOK IN S COTLAND Volume 4 Professionalism and Diversity 1880–2000

E D I T E D B Y DAV I D F I N K E L S T E I N A N D A L I S TA I R M C C L E E RY

EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY PRESS

© in this edition, Edinburgh University Press, 2007. Copyright in the individual contributions is retained by the authors. Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh Typeset in 11/13 Miller Text by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Manchester, and printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wilts A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 1829 3 (hardback)

The right of the contributors to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published with the support of the Edinburgh University Scholarly Publishing Initiatives Fund.

CONTENTS

Figures Tables Abbreviations Acknowledgements Chronology

ix xii xiii xiv xvii

Introduction

1

1. THE PUBLISHING INFRASTRUCTURE: 1880–1980 Section 1 Overview

13

The Competitors Rob Roy from Page to Screen

Richard Butt Richard Butt

16 21

The Professionalisation of Publishing Scottish Publishers Association Scottish PEN

David Finkelstein Helen Williams Moira Burgess

31 34 38

Library Provision in Scotland Airdrie Public Library P. M. Dott Memorial Socialist Library Scottish Poetry Library

John Crawford John Crawford

41 43

Helen Williams David Finkelstein

47 50

The Business of Publishing A Family A≠air Salamander Press Mainstream Role of the Scottish Arts Council

Iain Stevenson Alistair McCleery Rosemary Addison Alistair McCleery Alistair McCleery

54 56 61 64 67

vi

edinburgh history of the book in scotland

Selling to the World Nelson’s French Collection The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency

Alistair McCleery Siân Reynolds Alistair McCleery

71 73 80

The Development of the Bookshop John Menzies

Simon Ward David Finkelstein

83 88

2. PRODUCTION, FORM AND IMAGE Section 2 Overview

92

The Material Book Scottish Papermills Mechanical Typesetting Thomas Nelson & Sons

Duncan Glen Alistair McCleery Helen Williams Alistair McCleery

95 97 107 110

Typography Women Compositors Changing Technology The Printing Industry

Duncan Glen Siân Reynolds Helen Williams Alistair McCleery

122 133 136 141

Design and Illustration Agnes Miller Parker Joan Hassall

Rosemary Addison Rosemary Addison Rosemary Addison

148 155 161

The Book and Photography Reproducing Images The Books of Ian Hamilton Finlay

Tom Normand Alistair McCleery Ken Cockburn

168 170 178

3. PUBLISHING POLICIES: THE LITERARY CULTURE Section 3 Overview

182

The Changing Face of the Publishing House: 1880–1980 John Buchan, Publisher Jamie Byng, Publisher

Andrew Nash

Literary Publishing: 1880–1914 R. L. Stevenson Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Scots Observer

Andrew Nash Linda Dryden and Richard Dury Damian Atkinson

Literary Publishing: 1914–45

Margery Palmer McCulloch Alistair McCleery

Scottish Literary Magazines

Kate Macdonald Alistair McCleery

185 188 199 203 205 220 223 226

vii

contents Blackwood’s and Hugh MacDiarmid Naomi Mitchison

David Finkelstein Rosemary Addison

233 245

Literary Publishing: 1945–2000 Muriel Spark Akros and Cencrastus John Calder Literary Prizes Stephanie Wolfe-Murray

Jane Potter Rosemary Addison Zsuzsanna Varga Louise Milne Claire Squires Zsuzsanna Varga

250 252 256 261 264 273

The Gaelic Book

Richard A. V. Cox

277

4. PUBLISHING POLICIES: THE DIVERSITY OF PRINT Section 4 Overview

295

Religious Publishing William Robertson Smith T. & T. Clark Life and Work

Henry R. Sefton Alistair McCleery David Finkelstein Alistair McCleery

298 298 303 307

Educational, Academic and Legal Publishing Edinburgh University Press William Collins & Sons

Sarah Pedersen Alistair McCleery Iain Stevenson

311 319 323

Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishing Cartographic Publishing O∞cial Publishing

Iain Stevenson Iain Stevenson Iain Stevenson

330 337 343

Reference Publishing Conglomerates

Sarah Pedersen Alistair McCleery

346 348

Children’s Books Blackie & Sons Ltd Treasure Island Kelpies

Jane Potter Jane Potter Helen Williams Helen Williams

352 353 356 365

Magazines and Comics The Dandy, the Beano and The Broons Leo Baxendale and Alan Grant

Joseph McAleer

368

Joseph McAleer Alistair McCleery

375 379

viii

edinburgh history of the book in scotland 5. AUTHORS AND READERS

Section 5 Overview

385

Authors in the Literary Marketplace Annie S. Swan Neil M. Gunn Joyce Holms

Andrew Nash Andrew Nash Alistair McCleery Simon Ward

388 394 398 403

The Economics of Authorship Literary Agents Authorship in 2001

Simon Ward Simon Ward Alistair McCleery

409 413 426

Readers and Reading Ladies’ Edinburgh Debating Society Ralph Glasser Children’s Reading in 1989 Harry Potter Edinburgh International Book Festival

David Finkelstein David Finkelstein Linda Fleming Alistair McCleery Helen Williams

431 434 439 442 447

David Finkelstein

452

6. THE FUTURE OF THE BOOK IN SCOTLAND Trends and Prospects from 2000 The New ‘New Media’ Encyclopaedia Britannica: Edinburgh to Chicago, Print to PC Contributors Bibliography Index

David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery Suzanne Ebel

455 458

Jane Potter

470 478 484 503

FIGURES

Frontispiece Cover of Adventure Land Annual, 1925 Section 1 1.1 Rob Roy statue, Culter, 1907 1.2 Poster for the play Rob Roy at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh 1909 1.3 Jacket image of Directory of Publishing in Scotland 1.4 Jacket image of Thirtieth Anniversary of the Scottish Publishers Association 1.5 James Meek, prize-winning novelist and journalist, who gave the 2006 Scottish PEN lecture at the Edinburgh International Book Festival 1.6 Airdrie Public Library, 1959 1.7 Edinburgh Central Library 1.8 National Library of Scotland 1.9 Scottish Poetry Library 1.10 Nelson French edition of Buchan’s Prester John, Le Prêtre Jean, 1951 1.11 Empire exhibition excursion leaflet, 1938, Thomas Nelson & Sons 1.12 Jacket cover images from Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series 1.13 John Menzies, 1959 Section 2 2.1 Cutting House, Kinleith Mill, c. 1950s 2.2 Apprentice sorting paper sheets, c. 1950s ix

xx

20 23 33 36

38 42 46 47 53 72 78 79 88

97 98

x 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 2.14 2.15

2.16 2.17 2.18

2.19

2.20 2.21

edinburgh history of the book in scotland Kinleith Mill buildings, c. 1950s 100 Creating the image on the stone 101 Lithographic reproduction of images 102 Images – plate making 103 Using the Monotype keyboard 105 Linotype machines 106 Setting by hand 108 Early twentieth-century proofing press 113 Imposed type 117 Precision of type 123 Compositors 126 Monotype keyboard at Nelsons, c. 1950 128 Minutes of the Edinburgh Typographical Sick Society, discussing whether women should be admitted to the society 132 Machine Printing at Nelsons 143 Cover of Edinburgh Typographia 1898–9 150 Agnes Miller Parker illustrations from H. E. Bates’ Travels through the Woods: The English Woodlands – April to April, Gollancz, 1936 156 Joan Hassall illustrations 1. Motif from Pride and Prejudice, Folio Society, 1957 162 2. Motif from The Early Hours, Oxford University Press, 1954 163 Robert Louis Stevenson, Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes 169 Ian Hamilton Finlay, 1983 177

Section 3 3.1 Popular edition of John Buchan Prester John, undated 3.2 Jamie Byng 3.3 Yann Martel, Edinburgh, 2002 3.4 Alasdair Gray 3.5 Cover of Ian Maclaren, Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush, 1895 3.6 Cardboard ad. display for J. MacDougall Hay, Gillespie: A Novel, 1916 3.7 Studio photograph of Hugh MacDiarmid by Andrew Paterson of Inverness, 1927 3.8 Hugh MacDiarmid Memorial Sculpture, 1985 3.9 Naomi Mitchison in Botswana, 1962 3.10 Muriel Spark, Passport photo, 1940s 3.11 John Calder at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, 2001

187 198 200 202 218 224 230 235 245 251 260

figures 3.12 Stephanie Wolfe Murray, 1982 3.13 Front sti≠ paper cover and loose binding of John MacCormaik’s 1908 Gaelic-language novel Gun d’thug I spéis do’n àrmunn (She Gave her Love to the Hero) 3.14 Printed cover of Modern Gaelic Bards, published by Eneas Mackay of Stirling in 1908 3.15 Cover of Gaelic journal Gairm, No. 191 Section 4 4.1 Title page to Nelson’s Concordance to the Bible, undated 4.2 George Davie, The Democratic Intellect, Edinburgh University Press, cover designed by George Mackie 4.3 Map: Scotland of Old 4.4 Chambers Dictionary, still a useful tool 4.5 Treasure Island 4.6 Kelpies cover 4.7 Boy reading Oor Wullie Section 5 5.1 Home of Annie S. Swan 5.2 Cover of Frederick Victor Branford, 5 Poems, Porpoise Press, 1922, first work published by the latter. The cover design is by Cecile Walton 5.3 Neil Gunn cover, The Atom of Delight, Faber & Faber, 1956 5.4 The Ladies’ Edinburgh Magazine 5.5 Ralph Glasser, 1986 5.6 Contemporary reader of Iain Banks 5.7 Nelson Juniors 5.8 J. K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter children’s book series. 5.9 Gore Vidal at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, 2001 5.10 Poets Edwin Morgan and Liz Lochhead at first Wigtown Book Festival, 1999 Section 6 6.1 Screen shot, BooksfromScotland website

xi 272

279 283 285

299 318 336 347 357 364 375

393

397 399 433 438 443 445 448 451 453

463

TABLES

Section 1 1.1 Grants to Publishers, 1990–2001 1.2 National Lottery Grants to Publishers, 1999–2002

68 68

Section 3 3.1 Diversification in Gaelic Publishing in the Late Nineteenth Century 3.2 Title Rates per Publishing Company, 1968–99, 2000–2 3.3 Publishers of Gaelic and Bilingual Publications, 2000–2 3.4 Gaelic and Bilingual Publications, 2000–2

282 290 291 292

Section 5 5.1 Breakdown of Authors’ Earnings 5.2 Literacy of Brides and Bridegrooms, 1875–1900 5.3 Census Returns Noting Persons in Receipt of Education 5.4 Gallup Poll, International Comparisons of Reading, 1950 5.5 Book Reading in Europe, 1963

427 432 432 441 442

xii

ABBREVIATIONS

AHRC ASLS AUP BPC CLA CUP ETS EUP GDP JBA LTS NA NLS OUP RAE SAC SAPPHIRE SEED SPA SPCK StAnza STV WHP

Arts and Humanities Research Council Association for Scottish Literary Studies Aberdeen University Press British Printing Corporation Copyright Licensing Agency Cambridge University Press Edinburgh Typographical Society Edinburgh University Press Gross Domestic Product John Buchan Archive, Edinburgh University Learning and Teaching Scotland Nelson Archive, Edinburgh University National Library of Scotland Oxford University Press Research Assessment Exercise Scottish Arts Council Scottish Archive of Printing and Publishing History Records Scottish Executive Education Development Scottish Publishers’ Association Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge St Andrews Poetry Festival Scottish Television Wild Hawthorn Press

xiii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This volume is the result of many years of collaborative work and e≠ort, and would not have been possible without the generosity of a number of people and organisations. We are grateful to the members of the project’s Advisory Board who provided helpful advice in the early stages of the book’s planning, and indebted to the AHRC, who provided one of the editors with research leave funding to enable completion of work on the project. Funding to facilitate research and editorial work at various stages of project work has also come from the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, Napier University, Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh and the British Academy. For copyright permission and help in reproducing illustrations we acknowledge and thank the following organisations and individuals: Birlinn Press; Bloomsbury; Floris Books; the Trustees of the National Library of Scotland; SAPPHIRE; Scottish Pen; Scottish Publishers Association; Hugh Andrew; Jenni Calder; Lorraine Fannin; Brian Hillyard; Gareth James; Joseph McAleer; Kate MacDonald; Margery Palmer-McCulloch; Tessa Ransford; Jennie Renton; Annie Ross; Marion Sinclair; Robin Smith; Iain Stevenson; Elspeth Talbot; Peter Thackeray; Iain Wright. There are several individuals to whom we owe an enormous debt of gratitude, and without whom this volume could not have come to function. Preparation for this volume would not have been completed without the assistance of our editorial assistant Dr Ben Brabon and picture researcher Stephanie Genz. Similarly, we are indebted to the SAPPHIRE initiative researchers (Laura Black, Sarah Bromage, Linda Fleming, Heather Holmes and Kate Kelman), who over the past decade have researched and uncovered valuable primary source material that has materially aided the production of this volume. We would xiv

acknowledgements

xv

also like to thank Jackie Jones, Nicola Wood, James Dale and Patricia Hymans who have worked with us to bring the volume to final publication. It has been a long journey to the finish.

Copyright Acknowledgements Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material in this book. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to make the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity. Frontispiece. Cover of Adventure Land Annual. Courtesy of Joseph McAleer. Figure 1.1 Rob Roy Statue, Culter (1907). © St Andrews University Library. Licensor www.scran.ac.uk. Figure 1.2 Poster for the play ‘Rob Roy’ at the Royal Lyceum Theatre (1909). © Glasgow University Library. Licensor www.scran.ac.uk. Figures 1.3 Jacket image of Directory of Publishing in Scotland; 1.4 Jacket image of Thirtieth Anniversary of the Scottish Publishers Association; 6.1 Screen shot, BooksfromScotland website. Reproduced by kind permission of Publishing Scotland. Figures 1.5 James Meek, prize-winning novelist and journalist, who gave the 2006 Scottish PEN lecture at the Edinburgh International Book Festival; 3.9 Naomi Mitchison in Botswana, 1962. Reproduced by kind permission of Jenni Calder and Scottish PEN. Figures 1.6 Airdrie Public Library (1959); 1.13 John Menzies (1959); 2.21 Ian Hamilton Finlay (1983); 3.4 Alasdair Gray; 3.8 Hugh MacDiarmid Memorial Sculpture (1985); 3.12 Stephanie Wolfe Murray (1982); 5.5 Ralph Glasser (1986). © The Scotsman Publications Ltd. Licensor www.scran.ac.uk. Figures 1.10 Nelson French edition of Buchan’s Prester John, Le Prêtre Jean (1951); 3.1 Popular edition of John Buchan Prester John, undated. Reproduced by kind permission of Kate MacDonald, Gareth James and Peter Thackeray. Figures 1.11 Empire exhibition excursion leaflet (1938), Thomas Nelson and Sons; 2.1 Cutting House, Kinleith Mill, ca. 1950s; 2.2 Apprentice sorting paper sheets, ca. 1950s; 2.3 Kinleith Mill buildings, ca. 1950s; 2.4 Creating the image on the stone; 2.5 Lithographic reproduction of images; 2.6 Images – plate making; 2.7 Using the monotype keyboard; 2.8 Linotype machine; 2.9 Setting by hand; 2.10 Early twentieth-century proofing press; 2.11 Imposed type; 2.12 Precision of type; 2.13 Compositors; 2.14 Monotype caster at Nelsons (c. 1950). 2.16 Machine Printing at Nelsons; 2.17 Cover of Edinburgh Typographia 1898–99; 2.18 Three Agnes Miller Parker illustrations from H. E. Bates’s Travels through the Woods: The English Woodlands – April to April, Gollancz,

xvi

edinburgh history of the book in scotland

1936; 2.19 Joan Hassall illustrations; 2.20 Robert Louis Stevenson, Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes; 5.7 Nelson Juniors. Reproduced by kind permission of SAPPHIRE. Figure 1.12 Jacket cover images from Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series. Reproduced by kind permission of Birlinn Press. Figure 2.15 Minutes of the Edinburgh Typographical Sick Society, discussing whether women should be admitted to the society. © Edinburgh City Libraries (NC). Licensor www.scran.ac.uk. Figures 3.2 Jamie Byng; 3.3 Yann Martel, Edinburgh (2002); 3.6 Cardboard ad display for J. MacDougall Hay, Gillespie: A Novel (1916); 3.11 John Calder at the Edinburgh International Book Festival (2001); 5.6 Contemporary reader of Iain Banks; 5.9 Gore Vidal at the Edinburgh International Book Festival (2001); 5.10 Poets Edwin Morgan and Liz Lochhead at first Wigtown Book Festival (1999). Reproduced by kind permission of Jennie Renton. Figure 3.7 Studio photograph of Hugh MacDiarmid by Andrew Paterson of Inverness (1927). Reproduced by kind permission of Margery Palmer McCulloch and Iain Wright. Figure 3.10 Muriel Spark (1960). Reproduced by kind permission of the Trustees of the National Library of Scotland. Figures 3.13 Front stiff paper cover and loose binding of John MacCormaig’s Gaelic language novel Gun d’thug I spéis do’n àrmunn (She Gave her Love to the Hero); 3.14 Printed cover of Modern Gaelic Bards, published by Eneas Mackay of Stirling in 1908. © Gaidheil Alba. Licensor www.scran.ac.uk. Figure 4.2 George Davie, The Democratic Intellect, Edinburgh University Press, cover designed by George Mackie. Reproduced by kind permission of Edinburgh University Press. Figure 4.3 Map: Scotland of Old. Reproduced by kind permission of Iain Stevenson. Figure 4.4 Chambers Dictionary, still a useful tool. Reproduced by kind permission of SAPPHIRE and Annie Ross. Figure 4.5 Treasure Island. © National Museums Scotland. Licensor www.scran.ac.uk. Figure 4.6 Kelpies cover. Reproduced by kind permission of Floris Books and Canongate. Figure 5.1 Home of Annie S. Swan. © Newsquest (Herald & Times). Licensor www.scran.ac.uk. Figure 5.4 The Ladies’ Edinburgh Magazine. © Edinburgh City Libraries (NC). Licensor www.scran.ac.uk. Figure 5.8 J. K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter children’s book series. Reproduced by kind permission of Bloomsbury.

CHRONOLOGY

1878 1879 1885 1886 1888 1890 1896

1897 1899 1906

1908 1911 1914 1916 1918 1920 1923

1924

Ups and Downs by Annie S. Swan published John Menzies dies Nelsons publish the King James Bible R. L. Stevenson Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Scottish Art Review founded Forth Rail Bridge opened First film screening in Scotland, in Edinburgh’s Empire Palace Theatre on 13 April First Scottish film screened, The Departure of the Columba from Rothesay Pier, at Glasgow’s Skating Palace Naomi Mitchison born Electricity first used to drive Glasgow trams First two Labour MPs elected in Scotland Forward, west of Scotland radical paper launched Joan Hassall born First film adaptation of Scottish novel, Sir Walter Scott’s The Bride of Lammermoor, by Itala Film First Scottish film adaptation of a Scottish novel, Sir Walter Scott’s Rob Roy Su≠ragette tries to blow up Burns Cottage Ralph Glasser born Armistice Day First public radio broadcast in UK Broadcasting begins in Scotland with opening of Glasgow station on 6 March John Maclean dies Radio Times begins publication Scots Magazine refounded xvii

xviii 1925 1926 1927

1928

1929 1930

1931 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937

1938 1939

1945 1947 1948 1950 1952 1957 1960 1961 1962 1964

edinburgh history of the book in scotland Ian Hamilton Finlay born General Strike The British Broadcasting Company reconstituted as a public corporation by Director General John Reith Scottish PEN founded by C. M. Grieve (Hugh MacDiarmid) Scottish edition of Daily Express launched, first Scottish edition of English newspaper Scottish National Party established Film Society of Glasgow founded Edinburgh Film Guild formed Scottish Educational Cinema Society formed Evacuation of St Kilda Scottish Educational Cinema Society formed Glasgow Co-operative Film Library established Britain’s first amateur film festival held in Glasgow Scottish Film Council established in Glasgow Anti-Catholic riots in Edinburgh BBC begins restricted television service broadcasting around London Saltire Society founded P. M. Dott Memorial Socialist Library formally opened by Harold Laski The Dandy launched First Films of Scotland Committee established Ministry of Information becomes fully operational BBC Home Service replaces National and Regional programmes BBC Scottish Home Service launched The Edinburgh International Film Festival begins Edinburgh University Press publishes its first three titles Stone of Scone stolen from Westminster The Broons BBC Television begins broadcasting in Scotland Commercial television begins broadcasting in Scotland Elvis Presley stops o≠ at Prestwick Airport Border Television and Grampian Television begin broadcasting First transatlantic transmission via the Telstar communications satellite Forth Road Bridge opened Radio Caroline, first of the pirate radio stations, begins broadcasting

chronology 1965 1966 1971 1973 1974 1976 1979 1981 1982 1984 1987 1995 1996 1997 1999

xix

Akros founded by Duncan Glen BBC2 begins broadcasting in Scotland Glasgow News, first of the decade’s radical and alternative press launched Radio Clyde, first independent local radio station in Scotland, begins broadcasting Scottish Publishers’ Association founded BBC Scottish regional radio stations, Radio Highland (bilingual) and Radio nan Eilean, launched Cencrastus launched Alasdair Gray, Lanark Scottish Poetry Library Association formed Miners’ strike First in ‘Kelpies’ series published Scottish Book Collector founded Channel 5 broadcasting wins television licence and begins broadcasting Scottish Television acquires Caledonian Publishing and becomes Scottish Media Group J. K. Rowling Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone New Scottish Parliament opened

Cover of Adventure Land Annual, 1925.

INTRODUCTION

This moral is that the flower of art blooms only where the soil is deep, that it takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature, that it needs a complex social machinery to set a writer in motion. (Henry James, Hawthorne, 1879) Publishing and the spread of books in Scotland between 1880 and 2000 has followed a trajectory linked to economic and political realities: from economic success derived from the industry’s integration into British overseas markets in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, to its decline, merger, restructuring and redevelopment within a globalised marketplace and a devolved regional political structure. Thus, while at the beginning of the twentieth century Scottish publishing and printing was dominated by venerable, independently-owned family organisations whose operations often ran the gamut of book interests from book production, binding, typography and cover design to editorial, marketing and distribution work, by the end of the century Scottish publishing and printing had been broken down into smaller units, swallowed up into larger organisations, or operated as a niche market activity often surviving (as in the case of Scottish-based literary journals) with the help of funding from central government sources. As Volume 3 of the History of the Book in Scotland has pointed out, the history of Scotland’s encounters with print over the course of the nineteenth century interlinks closely with the subsequent enfolding of print within larger social, cultural and historical trends in the twentieth. Between 1800 and 1880 Scotland moved from being a rural nation built upon a population clustered round a small number of significant towns and scattered agrarian communities, to an urbanised state successful in industrialised terms, highly skilled, literate and outward looking. 1

2

edinburgh history of the book in scotland

Scotland’s urbanisation in the nineteenth century was a continuation of a social and agricultural reform process spanning the period 1760 to 1830, during which the country saw the dislocation and shifting of populations from rural settings to new and established towns and settlements, or indeed further afield overseas. Internal migration to specific sites was encouraged: thus, as one historian has noted, between 1700 and 1840 some eighty-five ‘planned villages’ were founded in the Lowlands alone to support new industry needs, the majority between 1760 and 1815 (Devine: 141). The most famous of these included David Dale’s cotton weaving mill villages of Blantyre and New Lanark, developed in 1785 and 1786 respectively. Other unplanned settlements developed around mining and manufacturing centres. Rural transportation improved dramatically through the construction of networks of private and parish roads between 1790 and 1815 (costing an estimated £2m–£3m), and of the Forth and Clyde Canals in 1790 and the Union Canal in 1822, which enabled river transport to bring produce to the expanding capital cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh (Devine: 113, 141). Britain’s rail network, begun in 1826 and expanded with vigour throughout the century, and the development of steam driven ships during the same period, allowed cheaper and quicker transport of products (and people) within and across Scottish borders. The result was an increase in manufacturing for home and overseas markets, a shift of population from rural to urban settings, and increased demand for skilled and unskilled workers to build towns and cities, roads, bridges and canals, and to work the coalmines and industrial and manufacturing workshops built in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. Between 1750 and 1850, the number of people inhabiting Scottish towns of 20,000 or over rose from 9.2 per cent to 32 per cent, placing the nation second in the league of Western European ‘urbanized societies’ (Devine: 152–3), behind England and Wales. With increased urbanisation and industry came motivation to improve literacy and educational opportunities for this newly mobile working force. Political and economic restrictions on print in the nineteenth century were lifted in a way that stimulated cheaper and faster production of print to support new reading interests: punitive, socalled ‘taxes on knowledge’ were repealed in 1861; the Education Acts of 1870 and 1872 in England, Wales and Scotland established the principle of free, publicly funded education for all qualifying youngsters, and so created new marketing opportunities for Scottish publishers; and after 1853 public authorities began developing a network of reading rooms and libraries to cater for the results of such educational initiatives. This last was done in an uncoordinated and ine≠ectual

introduction

3

manner until the private library initiative of Andrew Carnegie at the turn of the century spurred on public library expansion. By the end of the nineteenth century, literacy rates across Western European nations had risen steadily to approximately 90 per cent of their populations, primarily through active state intervention (Monaghan; Fischer). In Scotland, literacy rates amongst men and women, always above average in comparison to European and English counterparts, saw steady improvement to near universal literacy of around 97 per cent. Book, magazine and newspaper production and consumption rose accordingly, and family-led Scottish publishing houses created at the beginning of the nineteenth century (William Blackwood & Sons, Thomas Nelson & Sons, W. & R. Chambers, Blackie, William Collins, Bartholomews, to name a few) were market leaders in their fields by the end of the century.

Migration, emigration and Scottish trade As Tom Devine points out, the latter half of the nineteenth century was a time when Scottish industry dominated global trade, ‘a force to be reckoned with in the world economy’, which had achieved this due to innovation, plentiful supplies of fuels and raw materials, and cheap labour costs (Devine: 261). But if in Victorian times the engines that drove Scotland’s economy to success were its industrial base and dependency on overseas trade to take the goods produced in the jute factories of Dundee, the shipyards of Glasgow, the thread, cotton, wool centres in Paisley and the Borders, and the printed books from Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee and elsewhere, it is equally true to say that among its other great exports were its skilled and literate workers. It is reckoned that between 1825 and 1938 almost 2.33 million Scots left Scotland to work and live in the far-flung provinces and areas forming part of the network of countries dominated by or linked to Britain – Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, the Far East. Another statistical account suggests that emigration continued apace throughout the twentieth century: between 1911 and 1980, 23 per cent of those born in Scotland left its borders to find opportunities elsewhere (Pittock: 290). Yet in face of such emigration, labour numbers in Scotland would be sustained in the nineteenth and early twentieth century through an influx of skilled immigrants, both external and internal to the area. General trends in Scotland saw Highland communities decline as their inhabitants shifted to the Lowlands or overseas in search of work opportunities. The West Coast and the communities clustered round the industrial powerhouse that was Glasgow saw an upsurge of both

4

edinburgh history of the book in scotland

Highland and Hebridean communities, and a rise in the number of Irish immigrants, drawn after the Great Famine of the 1840s and in subsequent years to labour in the coal mines, shipyards and factories near this industrial centre. By the 1860s, the coal and iron mining communities of Ayrshire and Lanarkshire would be dominated by Irish migrants, solving the problems of labour shortages caused by the departure of Scots to overseas destinations. Scottish printing and publishing firms often solved the di∞culty of labour shortage by recruiting skilled non-Scots workers from England and beyond. Thus when the Edinburgh printing and publishing industry faced a major union strike for shorter working hours in 1872, the Master Printers Association, founded in 1846 by the leading firms to fight union demands, broke the strike by engaging an agent to advertise and hire non-union ‘rat’ labour, who were distributed amongst all the o∞ces involved. Ads in major town newspapers attracted skilled workers from Hull, Manchester and London (Finkelstein 2002: 41). The result was a defeat for the union, and the entrenchment of non-unionised working spaces in significant parts of the industry through to the early 1900s. Between 1861 and 1940 more than half the natural increase of population in Scotland left its shores. Many went to the United States, though a significant number were drawn to Australia, New Zealand and Canada through various schemes of assisted passage for skilled workers and experienced farmers. Equally attractive to young men were the gold and diamond mines that throughout the century produced ‘rushes’ of panners and diggers seeking quick returns for their labours, or in the case of South Africa, opportunities to fight in a popular war. In the union records of the Edinburgh Typographical Society, whose lists between 1882 and 1903 o≠er details on about 1,500 members, one finds emigration patterns emulating such peaks of interest: between 1895 and 1903, for example, forty members ‘lifted’ their union cards to go to South Africa, as opposed to just ten who had emigrated between 1882 and 1895; sixteen would depart for Canada between 1890 and 1903; fourteen would travel to New Zealand and Australia during the same period; forty-three would head towards the US between 1882 and 1903; while twenty-eight would transfer to Dublin after 1890, most during the years 1891 to 1894. Two would emigrate to China in 1903, and another two would travel to India in 1902.1 Though the numbers do not seem high in comparison to general migration patterns, in total around 10 per cent (154 out of 1,500) of the compositors, machinists and printers registered with the Edinburgh Typographical Union during the last 1

Edinburgh Typographical Society, membership records, 1871–1903. NLS Acc. 4806: 86–9.

introduction

5

twenty years of the century would seek opportunities overseas, echoing similar shifts in printing sectors in Glasgow, Aberdeen, Dundee and other Scottish towns. Also noticeable were the numbers of union members transferring across the border to English printing establishments, notably in Manchester, London, Cambridge and Oxford, and the flow back across the border of non-Scots filling vacancies in the field. Despite this flux in employment figures, the numbers of workers in the print, publishing and ancillary industries in Scotland remained significant through to the early twentieth century. In 1882 it was estimated that in Edinburgh alone printing and allied trades employed 3,504 men and 2,230 women. In 1911 worker numbers in Edinburgh had risen to 5,537 men and 4,562 women. By the 1960s, numbers had dropped, but nevertheless Edinburgh’s printing industry was still employing between 5,000 and 6,000 workers in total (Reynolds: 11, 25, 27). Other printing centres had similarly robust labour figures. Though nowhere near as central in printing terms as its Edinburgh competitors, Aberdeen’s main printer, Arthur King & Co., saw its workforce triple between 1872 and 1887, from twenty-one employees to sixty-six, then triple in number again by 1904 to 211, four years after it had relaunched as Aberdeen University Press (Beavan: 21). The Glasgow publishing powerhouse Collins alone employed over 1,900 employees at its peak in 1895 (Keir: 204).

Scotland and the Empire In drawing attention to how constant movement of skilled labour in and out of the country became an accepted social condition in Victorian Scotland, much has been made of the vital contribution of Scots abroad ‘as carriers of civilization, as builders and leaders of émigré communities, as empire builders par excellence’ (Richards: 474). Scotland’s contribution in print culture terms was no exception. It dominated overseas export trade in heavy printing and ancillary industry machinery; to have a machine built or designed in Scotland was a guarantee of quality work, as in the case of machinery from the Scottish firm James Milne & Son, specially commissioned in 1882 to equip the Otago Papers Mills in Dunedin, New Zealand’s main papermill throughout the twentieth century, and to whom it supplied the fifty-two ton MG paper machine that would prove the centrepiece of its operations. If it was not machinery, then it was skilled personnel, who as they emigrated transferred wholesale with them printing skills, social traditions and strong connections to their places of origin, for example in the papermill town founded in 1954 for the Balerno-based Kinleith Mills in Tokoroa, a

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remote part of New Zealand’s North Island. Its Scottish director, David Henry, took pride in naming its streets after Scottish places, in bringing in Scottish-born foremen to supervise operations, and in ensuring the mill lay-out replicated that of its parent company’s Scottish base. Finally, there was much to note in the quality and quantity of books Scottish publishers and printers produced and distributed across the English-speaking world. Scotland’s publishing and printing trades would thrive on Empirebased connections, opening branch o∞ces overseas in the last decades of the nineteenth century and throughout the early twentieth century. Nelsons, one of the first Scottish publishers to open an o∞ce in the US (at 42 Bleeker Street, New York in 1854), would prove particularly attentive to this side of its business. By 1915 it had established o∞ces in Dublin, Paris, Leipzig, Toronto and Bombay. Later it set up trading relations in Melbourne and Cape Town, and in 1961 and 1963, just prior to it changing hands, it would open o∞ces in Lagos and Nairobi. In 1887 the Edinburgh papermakers Cowan & Co. established a branch o∞ce in Dunedin. They would be followed a year later by the Glasgowbased publishers William Collins & Sons, who set up a permanent base in New Zealand in 1888, completing an expansion into South Africa, India and Australia, the last where they had established permanent warehouses, showrooms and o∞ces in 1876. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century, Scottish publishers used not just their overseas o∞ces but also a mixture of marketing strategies to publicise and position their products. One key area Scots-based publishers moved quickly to cover at home and abroad was the educational and text-book market, particularly after the development of universal education provision in England, Scotland and Wales in the 1870s, and the subsequent export of such educational systems and structures overseas. The results, as one critic notes, provide ‘powerful testament to the commercial significance of the captive market delivered to the book trade by the systems of higher and secondary education’ (Milner: 70). By the early twentieth century it was common to find most overseas libraries stocked with texts published by Scots publishers, distributed and marketed through permanent bases in the relevant regions.

Decline and redevelopment But such expansion did not last, and as the twentieth century progressed Scottish industry in general, and publishing in particular, saw a rapid period of decline and change in business structures and world

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markets. In 1911, Scotland’s eight main industries – agriculture, coalmining, shipbuilding and engineering, textiles, building, steel and fishing – accounted for 60 per cent of its general output, and 12.5 per cent of total UK output (Harvie 1981: 1). By the year 2000, Scotland’s manufacturing and mining industries had receded in importance, producing less than 20 per cent of Scotland’s GDP, replaced by a booming service sector generating almost 70 per cent of Scottish GDP (Devine: 645). At the start of the twenty-first century, Scotland’s economy was being supported by seven areas little recognised 100 years before – namely financial services, oil and gas, tourism, light engineering, public services, retailing and bio-sciences. These figures represent a process of change evolving as a result of significant economic and political change in Scotland and Britain over the course of the twentieth century. Scottish economic development in the twentieth century was halted and forced to undergo change by great historical ruptures and decisive world events. The First World War was the first of many blows dealt to Scotland’s general manufacturing and industrial base. Heavy casualties in the trenches of Europe took its share of skilled workers, and Scotland su≠ered losses of over 110,000 men at the front. Such losses were compounded by the e≠ects of the general economic depression of the 1920s and 1930s, when domestic production dropped quickly, and there was a diminution and depletion of mining resources. Between 1924 and 1937, GDP levels across the UK grew at a minuscule 2.2 per cent overall, while in Scotland at the depths of the Depression between 1928 and 1932 its GDP average actually declined by 2 per cent per year, and between 1924 and 1935 gross industrial output contracted annually by 2.89 per cent (Devine: 318, 269). The onset of the Second World War would temporarily increase industrial output in support of war needs, though German bombings of Clydeside and other industrial centres inflicted much damage on Scottish manufacturing infrastructure. Though the two world wars saw a captive British audience, as it were, demand more printed material to occupy, entertain and educate, Scottish printers struggled under wartime strictures and rationing, as well as death and loss of key skilled personnel. The Scottish print workforce was among many to be a≠ected by these downturns: the 1921 Census Report for Scotland recorded the total number of compositors (just one of the many skilled tasks supporting print production) as 4,556; by 1931 numbers reported had dropped 9 per cent to 4,221 (Gillespie: 144). Across Scotland union membership similarly fell: in 1925 the Scottish Typographical Association recorded a total of 4,905 journeymen members, of whom 3,356 were compositors; by 1938 membership had dropped to 4,222, of whom 2,694 were compositors (Gillespie: 144).

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Slow to recuperate after the ravages of the Depression and the strictures imposed by the two world wars, from the 1950s onwards familyowned Scottish publishing and printing firms were subject to a wave of mergers and business restructuring from new, emerging competitors from overseas. Large firms like Nelsons, Collins, Blackie and Blackwoods were particularly hard hit, merging and remerging with other firms and units over the last thirty years of the century until they were no longer identifiable as based, owned or supported in Scotland. This accordingly presents those who study the history of the twentieth-century book in Scotland with a di∞culty: that is, disaggregating purely Scottish-based data and contexts on books and print from UK and even global statistics and activity. Contributors to this volume accordingly have had to engage with the issue of Scottish books within global contexts.

Globalisation and the creative industries A noticeable trend in the latter part of the twentieth century global book economy a≠ecting Scottish publishing and printing concerns has been the phenomenal expansion of multinational organisations, and the simultaneous rise in numbers of books published. It has been estimated that in 1850 annual world book production totalled 50,000; in 1952 it was 250,000 titles; and in 2000 it was estimated to be 521,000 (Escarpit: 57–8; Zaid: 21). A handful of powerful corporations produce an increasingly higher percentage of the books circulating in the anglophone world. As the dominance of multinational organisations in the book and printing market has increased, there has also been a shift in the players dominating such arenas. Whereas in the nineteenth century Scotland prided itself in having been at the forefront of creating, defining and exporting book trade initiatives, by the late twentieth century, with the loss of the British colonies as captive markets and the takeover and merger of many of its family-based firms, the balance had shifted towards US and European rivals as significant players in the world market. The e≠ect of other competitors for leisure time, such as visual and aural media (television, radio, film, graphic novels), has proven with some irony to be another busy arena of print culture activity, with insatiable demand for new material drawn from printed sources providing lucrative avenues for authors to increase income streams from their work. Books and print have become embedded into what is now seen as an important economic sector for Scotland, namely the creative and cultural industries. Creative media and the cultural industries would assume a high profile in Scotland’s economic development over the latter half of the

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twentieth century, particularly with the start of international annual cultural festivals that have become significant tourist events in their own right. These include the Edinburgh International Festival and the International Film Festival, both started in 1947; and the International Book Festival, founded in 1983. In the last thirty years of the twentieth century, Scotland’s cultural industries benefited from or were shaped by changes in Scottish regional identity and a move to devolved political autonomy. Earlier in the century Scotland had seen some move towards a regionalised structure of governance, with the addition of such posts as a minister of state added to the Scottish O∞ce in 1919, an upgrade of the Scottish secretaryship to a secretaryship of state in 1926, and the shifting of Scottish O∞ce departments of Agriculture and Fisheries, Education, Health and Home from Dover House in London to St Andrew’s House in Edinburgh. In part this was an attempt to appease Scots a≠ronted by the abandonment in the 1920s of the Labour government’s commitment to the principle of Scottish Home Rule, a movement that had been developing politically from the 1880s onwards, and which had been stopped by the outbreak of the First World War. Such regionalisation once again was put on hold due to the outbreak of the Second World War, and the subsequent need to rebuild Britain after its conclusion in 1945. The result was that from the late 1940s through to the 1960s, the UK government concentrated and centralised its hold on governance, nationalising coal, rail, electricity, iron and steel work between 1947 and 1949, and creating a national health service and social security systems from 1948 onwards that promoted British policy integration. The loss of empire over the 1950s and 1960s also deprived Scotland and Britain of previously secure markets, forcing it to face economic competition where previously it had held privileged status, and strengthening arguments for further economic and political integration.

Regionalisation and devolution In 1965, however, the then Scottish Secretary Willie Ross, published a National Plan for Scotland, which had far-reaching consequences for regional development. It established a Scottish Development Department, which implemented planning initiatives across a range of cultural and social sectors. New towns and universities were founded and developed, and the Highlands and Islands Development Board was created to foster and promote structural development and public planning change in the North. Demands for further regional autonomy over the coming decades led to a failed referendum on devolution in 1979; it was a matter returned to with greater success eighteen years later, when

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Scottish Secretary Donald Dewar successfully piloted through legislation providing for a devolved Scottish parliament, for which Scots voted overwhelmingly in favour in the 1997 referendum, and which subsequently became a reality in 1999 after the conclusion of the first elections in modern times for a Scottish-based parliament. As regards the cultural world of books and print, from the late 1960s onwards, regionalised political interests would lead to concerted e≠orts to direct state funding to promoting and protecting Scotland’s cultural heritage, with some attention paid to books and print culture production in Scotland, which had hobbled through the vicissitudes of globalised market intervention in the 1950s and 1960s, emerging somewhat reduced in form compared to its peak in the 1880s and 1890s. Gaelic print culture, for one, was a major beneficiary of Scottish state intervention, in particular as a result of the founding of the Gaelic Books Council in 1968, funded initially by the Scottish Education Department and later by the Scottish Arts Council. Support from the Gaelic Books Council has interlinked with parallel cultural and educational initiatives, such as ethnographic collections created by John Lorne Campbell, Calum Maclean, Hamish Henderson and others connected to the University of Edinburgh’s School of Scottish Studies, the founding of Gaelic publications such as the literary journal Gairm in 1951, and the inclusion of Gaelic columns in Scottish newspapers such as The Scotsman, the Stornoway Gazette and the West Highland Free Press. Since the 1980s, funding from the Gaelic Books Council has allowed the development of Gaelic-focused publishing imprints such as Ur-sgeul, prompting a revival of a Gaelic reading audience interested in new work, and a renaissance of Gaelic literary writing. Similarly, from the 1970s onwards small, niche market publishers such as Polygon Press, Birlinn, Canongate, Mainstream and others emerged as important ‘incubators’ of Scottish-based textual material. Though the major publishing firms that dominated at the start of the twentieth century would be absorbed into other organisations by the end, in 2001 Scotland could still count eighty-five publishers active within its borders, the majority based in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Scottish literary and prose talents have invariably moved from early development and nurturing within such environments to publication and promotion by more powerful multinational print networks. Nevertheless such ‘incubation’ has proven e≠ective in supporting Scottish writing, whether in the form of promoting new work by Scotsbased authors, as was the case throughout the 1980s and 1990s in the publishing lists of Polygon, Canongate, Birlinn and Mainstream, among others, or in the contributions made to civic and social debate

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in the pages of literary magazines such as Akros, Chapman, Cencrastus, Lallans, Lines Review, Scottish Book Collector and Verse, to name but a few. But as Jane Potter points out in her contribution to this volume, such activity owed as much to individual entrepreneurialism as it did to state support, given that a significant number of these firms operated with some support from the Scottish Arts Council in direct or indirect subsidy form.

Scottish books in the twentieth century The history of the book in Scotland in the twentieth century, as charted in this volume, is a history of response to complex changes in society and to shifts in national and transnational trade activity. Historically, the history of the book has been linked with the publishing and production of printed materials, in the form of books, journals, newspapers and magazines. Readers will find present in this volume material relating to such physical artefacts and objects. The history of the book is equally about skills, core competencies and individual participation in less material terms – that is the processes by which decisions have been made about printed artefacts, the social, historical, political and historical factors a≠ecting such decisions, and the individuals who play key roles in such developments. Central to this volume is the understanding that the history of the book in twentieth-century Scotland is inseparable from a cultural narrative taking in social, political and economic change, where accelerating trends and patterns established earlier are overlaid with new factors observable for the first time, and where norms set in earlier periods of history are challenged during the course of the century. As contributors to the first section of this volume demonstrate, one can see linked events from previous centuries producing a chain of reactions invariably a≠ecting the place of print in cultural terms in the twentieth century. Thus the e≠ect of the creation of a ‘new reading public’ in the nineteenth century, reflected in the rise of a mass circulation press from the 1880s onwards, stimulated the growth of a reprint industry, itself powered by greater technological e∞ciency in production. The supremacy of the book as cultural arbiter in the early twentieth century was challenged by the rise of ‘new media’ sources such as radio, television and, to a lesser extent, cinema. Yet interestingly enough, such new sources, from the beginning either under o∞cial control or regulated in a restrictive manner, were unable to operate as flexibly as print, which increasingly freed itself from such controls and, in the company of other print media, was able as a result to o≠er a distinctive range of social and

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political opinion. In support of this theme, this volume o≠ers fresh perspective on the range and types of books produced and consumed in Scotland over the course of the twentieth century, from the literary canon to non-literary and technical material, and demonstrates the diversity of reading sources and spaces, from public and twopenny libraries to workers’ reading rooms, through which readers could obtain those books. Our study of twentieth-century Scottish print culture o≠ers original analysis of the shifting network of players involved in the chain of events leading to a nationally inflected print culture, and an account of how economic and social factors have a≠ected the abilities of Scottish print and publishing organisations to function e≠ectively in an increasingly competitive global market. Questions our contributors address include: what has led to the acquisition, selection, editing, management, marketing and distribution of key works in Scottish print contexts?; who has benefited, and who has struggled in the wake of twentieth-century changes?; and to what extent have globalised markets and changing reading habits a≠ected how Scottish print culture is produced and read? As the essays in this volume make clear, past and present Scottish contributions to global book culture have been distinctive, unique and irreplaceable. The History of the Book in Scotland over the twentieth century is a narrative demonstrating a depth and value in Scotland’s print culture heritage, whether in the form of technological innovation and creative and aesthetic production and design, the variety of genres and texts produced by Scots-based workers, or in the manner in which reading interests, both popular and specialist, have been anticipated and provided for by prescient editors and publishers developing successful book series, journals and magazines. The terminus for the volume, 2000, permits us to bring the story of the book in Scotland up to the close of the twentieth century and allows an informed anticipation of the future of the book as material object and the future of the book in Scotland. David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery

Section 1

THE PUBLISHING INFRASTRUCTURE: 1880–1980 Overview

here were many key changes in publishing and the book trade as the nineteenth century made its slow transit to the twentieth. Chief among these was the breaking of the monopoly that print, particularly in the form of books, had enjoyed for information and leisure since the second half of the fifteenth century. The development of radio, cinema and eventually television challenged the primacy of print with increasing success as the twentieth century advanced. Even within print the growth of a popular press, newspapers and magazines, driven by proprietors such as Northcli≠e, usurped the discretionary time that the reading of books might have used. Books, however, were not superseded; they, their authors and publishers, adapted to changing circumstances strengthening those roles the new media could not play and developing a symbiotic relationship with those media where appropriate. In particular, books, old and new, provided the narrative material that the new media could themselves adapt for their audiences, some of whom might in turn be attracted to the original texts. Richard Butt provides a case study of ‘Rob Roy’ that illustrates this interdependence; it complements his general essay on the growth of the new (and mass) media that opens this section of the volume. A second major change that swept through all aspects of the trade, from publishing to bookselling, was its increasing professionalisation, the subject of David Finkelstein’s essay in this section. This could be seen in three aspects: structural, vocational and organisational. Structural changes, discussed by Iain Stevenson and Alistair McCleery under the rubric of ‘the business of publishing’ also in this section, included a shift from cross-generational family ownership to conglomerate ownership for the larger companies and the continuing birth and growth of sole trader or partnership smaller firms to fill the gap. This

T

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also resulted in a professionalisation of entry into the trade; no longer would possession of the family name be a su∞cient qualification to join and manage the business. Linked to this is vocational change: the greater definition of roles within publishing, and other areas such as librarianship, and increasing specialisation hand-in-hand with codification of those roles. Finally, organisational ‘professionalisation’ entailed the creation of a number of representative bodies, at UK and later normally at Scottish level, to look after the interests of various groups within the book trade, to lobby on their behalf, and, for some, to regulate entry to the specific profession and police the newly codified practices of its members – in fact, much as trade guilds or trade unions had functioned in the past. Case studies of the Scottish Publishers Association and Scottish PEN provide the history of two of these bodies, for publishers and for authors respectively. The most trade-union-like of these bourgeois bodies developed within the library service, acting on behalf of librarians and o≠ering them a incremental road to chartered status. John Crawford’s survey of the growth of libraries in Scotland during the earlier part of this period begins with Andrew Carnegie’s first grant in 1880 to fund a free public library in his hometown of Dunfermline. Philanthropy gave way to public sponsorship through local authorities although provision varied between city and town, Lowlands and Highlands. The public library in Airdrie, the subject of a specific study by Crawford, had by 1956 a book stock of 30,000 volumes and 170,000 issues per annum; it was central to the community’s cultural and educational aspirations. The P. M. Dott Memorial Socialist Library in Edinburgh, on the other hand, represents, as Helen Williams describes, a particular moment in history when political aspirations for the development of a socialist society entailed not only the free provision of reading material for the population but also of a forum where such material could be dissected and discussed. When its historical moment had dimmed and expired, in 1939 and 1945, so too did the library. The final library in this sequence, the Scottish Poetry Library, might represent for a cultural pessimist a last, specialist stand against the barbarians but, as David Finkelstein notes, its site, so close to the Scottish Parliament, and the dynamism of its directors to date o≠er hope that poetry might once more play a central part in Scottish culture as it did in the age of Burns. Iain Stevenson demonstrates that the business of book production is more than a question of ownership or structures but of capital, markets and entrepreneurial acumen. He outlines the finances of publishing at the micro as well as the macro levels; in other words, he provides an indication of what is spent where and how much goes to each stage in

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the progress from author to book buyer. The case studies of the Salamander Press and Mainstream, by Rosemary Addison and Alistair McCleery respectively, o≠er contrasting accounts of the fortunes of two independent Scottish publishers. Both show the crucial importance of the commitment and energy of the founders of such businesses as well as the continuing issues of building a successful list, commercially and critically, under-capitalisation and limited markets. The practical assistance o≠ered by the Scottish Arts Council supplies the material for the final study in this area. What that study states is that markets, and that means readers in the case of books, are vital and that no amount of external support can really substitute for readers. The final two essays in this section examine the selling of books, in terms of selling Scotland’s books and culture abroad and, more conventionally, in terms of the development of the bookshop and bookselling within Scotland. Alistair McCleery’s essay tracks the movement from strong export markets, cultural and general, to the loss of such markets followed by the contemporary opportunity to reach out globally once more through online promotion and sales. Siân Reynolds’ account of the success of Nelsons at the beginning of this period in selling French books in France is balanced by an account from the very end of the period of the success in selling one particular book, Alexander McCall Smith’s The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, as a piece of literary property all round the world. This section closes with Simon Ward’s examination of bookselling over the twentieth century and within it sits David Finkelstein’s outline of the rise and fall of Scotland’s major retailer and distributor, John Menzies. Bookselling represents probably the single area of all those covered within this volume that the time traveller arriving from 1880 would have most di∞culty recognising in 2000 – and it is the one that continues to be most marked by change beyond that terminus.

The Competitors Richard Butt At the start of the twentieth century the Scottish press was well established while cinema was an emerging cottage industry. By the century’s end the mass media had become a highly organised force with profound social and economic power, developing from something that was of little threat to Scottish publishers to serious competition for the leisure time and money of Scottish readers. This chapter examines the development of Scotland’s media industries and the range of mass media entertainment available to Scottish audiences in the twentieth century, while also considering the sometimes symbiotic, sometimes parasitic relationship between these new media and the oldest one.

Newspapers and cinema before 1920 While The Scotsman was launched in 1817 ‘as a liberal antidote to the conservatism of the Edinburgh press’ (Macdonald: 9), Scotland was slow to develop its own daily press, the North British Daily Mail, published in Glasgow, the first sustained Scottish daily, emerging in 1847 almost 150 years after its English counterpart. This decade also saw the arrival of the Glasgow Herald and the Saturday Evening Post, a relatively radical popular Glasgow paper. Initially these papers focused on London-centred politics and international a≠airs, only slowly turning to the domestic scene around the mid-century. They were joined by other papers, including regional evening dailies such as the Greenock Telegraph in 1863 selling for a halfpenny. By the end of the century The Scotsman had developed from a strikingly outspoken publication to an advertising-funded quality paper with conservative leanings, creating a vacuum that was quickly filled by a variety of short-lived labour papers including the left of centre 16

the publishing infrastructure: 1880–1980

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workers’ co-operative produced Scottish Daily News, which during its brief life exceeded the circulation figures of the two rival national dailies, and Forward, the West of Scotland radical paper which emerged out of Glasgow’s Café Socialists in 1906 (Campbell: 30–2). Moving pictures were shown for the first time in Scotland on 13 April 1896, in Edinburgh’s Empire Palace Theatre, the programme including films of dancing, boxing and a cockfight, and accompanied by a number of variety acts. In Glasgow that year, Méliès’ hand-painted trick film A Trip to the Moon particularly impressed audiences when it played with the Robinson Crusoe pantomime at the Theatre Royal. The same year the first Scottish film, The Departure of the Columba from Rothesay Pier, was screened at the Skating Palace while George Green, a travelling showman whose family were to become major Scottish film exhibitors, employed moving pictures as one of his fairground amusements during the Christmas Carnival at Vinegar Hill Show Ground, east of Glasgow Cross (McBain). Showmen like Green shot and screened local scenes to draw an audience for their moving pictures, a gimmick picked up by cinema exhibitors who made short homemade newsreels of local community events (McBain). From 1910 Scottish cinematographers began to make short promotional films such as The Making of a Great Daily Newspaper (1911), produced by D. C. Thomson in Dundee to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Courier as a daily paper, and From Wool to Wearer – The Romance of Pesco Underwear (1913), a film about the manufacture of gentlemen’s hosiery. The focus of the Scottish press on events south of the border left a vacuum for domestic news that was met by George Green’s family’s regular issues of their Scottish Moving Picture News (McBain). By 1915 the two major cities had around forty cinemas, but aside from the few domestic feature films that were produced in this period, such as Inverness photographer Andrew Paterson’s Mairi – the Romance of a Highland Maiden (1912), the overwhelming majority of feature films were from England, Europe and America. Over a quarter of the films produced in or about Scotland during this period are literary adaptations, and, with the exception of Macbeth, these adaptations are based on the work of just three Scottish authors; Sir Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson and, latterly, J. M. Barrie. Beginning with Itala Film’s 1908 adaptation of Sir Walter Scott’s The Bride of Lammermoor, the work of these three Scots was plundered by producers throughout the world including the two US majors Vitagraph and Edison. British examples include Wrench Films’ The Duality of Man (1910), a short version of Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and United Films’ 1911 adaptation of Scott’s

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Rob Roy, directed by Arthur Vivian and shot in Aberfoyle and a Glasgow film studio. Even if the new medium’s relationship to the old one is seen as parasitic, it nonetheless maintained the cultural capital of the literature it fed from.

1920s and 1930s: Scottish news, Hollywood and the coming of broadcasting The Scottish editions of the Fleet Street popular dailies which emerged in the twentieth century, such as the Scottish edition of Beaverbrook Newspapers’ Daily Express in 1928, were largely concerned with increasing circulation north of the border rather than reporting Scottish issues. But in the 1920s the Scottish-based popular press, particularly the Sundays, began to produce the kind of sensational coverage of domestic news familiar to contemporary audiences (Macdonald: 15). In this they were joined by a new medium. The British Broadcasting Company was founded in 1922, with limited broadcasting beginning on 14 November. Glasgow and Aberdeen were selected as the locations for two of the eight broadcasting stations, with relay stations in Edinburgh and Dundee added over the next two years to extend coverage to populated areas. The Glasgow station was opened on 6 March 1923, with programmes initially running from 3.30 p.m. until late evening. The schedule included: ‘local news, talks by academics, topics for women, and a children’s hour. National news was taken on a simultaneous broadcast from London’. Crystal wireless sets within a twenty-five mile radius could receive the station’s signal, with valve sets receiving at longer distances. The several thousand Scottish homes which held licences could have tuned in to Rob Roy, the first play to be broadcast on the Scottish airways (McDowell: 15, 16). The Aberdeen local station was opened in October that year, its opening address ‘followed by music from the pipers and military band of the 2nd Gordon Highlanders’, the Glasgow transmissions supplemented by ‘community singing concerts, weather forecasts for farmers, Gaelic concerts, and charity events to raise funds for local causes’. By 1924 the Glasgow Herald was able to declare that ‘broadcasting has become a definite part of the fabric of our social life’. Aberdeen audiences’ preference for local programming, and the station’s position as the BBC’s most northerly base meant the station was allowed to continue producing its own programmes while the other local stations, Dundee and Edinburgh, were obliged to take Glasgow programmes following the introduction of the Regional Scheme in 1928 (McDowell: 16, 17). This scheme, part of the BBC’s policy of centralisation, treated Scotland as a

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single region, albeit a national one, within the UK broadcasting service. The new dual programme service, which o≠ered a choice between the National Programme and Scottish Regional Programme, began on 25 September 1932. The result for listeners was a marked improvement in both broadcasting coverage and programme quality, but it also confirmed the structure for UK broadcasting that frustrated Scottish broadcasters and audiences for decades to come. The British Broadcasting Company was reconstituted at the start of 1927 as a public corporation by its first director general John Reith, the son of a Free Church of Scotland minister from Stonehaven. Reith’s vision of the social role of broadcasting informed the public service programming available to audiences in Scotland, whose Regional Programme, for instance, broadcast a mix of specifically Scottish material, ‘local news, music concerts, religious services, dance music, vaudeville, drama and schools programmes’ and non-Scottish material produced in London (Macdonald: 26–7). If radio was dominated by London, film was now dominated by Hollywood. Westerns, particularly those starring the prolific Tom Mix, melodramas with Clara Bow, Lillian Gish and Mary Pickford, and the comedies of Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd were a staple diet for Scottish audiences. Children’s Saturday matinees featured much the same fare, with Westerns and anything with dog star Rin Tin Tin particularly popular for the penny or empty jam jar entry fee. In this silent era musical accompaniment ranged from a single organist or pianist, through to a small orchestra. From the end of the 1920s a number of indigenous film companies were formed, notably Scottish Film Productions (1928) and Campbell Harper Films (1930), to meet the demand for commissioned promotional, instructional and educational films. Two years after the arrival of the talkies, Al Jolson reduced Scottish audiences to tears with his rendition of ‘Sonny Boy’ in The Singing Fool (1929) and sold to packedout audiences in the newly sound converted cinemas such as Glasgow’s Coliseum (Martin: 17). Now, almost every town in Scotland had a picture house or electric cinema; Glasgow had 127. By 1933, there were 903 million admissions in UK cinemas as a whole, with families frequently attending the local cinema over three times a week. Cinema going was a leisure experience that, in its internal architecture, carpeting, seating, heating and lighting o≠ered audiences a fleeting experience of the glamour of the Hollywood stars and luxury of the lifestyle of their characters projected onto the screen. The escapism of Hollywood’s high production value dream world was generally preferred over British films which were criticised by Scottish

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Figure 1.1 Rob Roy Statue, Culter, 1907.

audiences for either reflecting the world the domestic audience wanted to escape or for o≠ering an alienating version of upper-class Englishness. For children, Saturday matinees now included purposemade series such as Flash Gordon (1936, Stephani, Frederick) starring

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Buster Crabbe, Jean Rogers and the deadpan Charles Middleton as Ming the Merciless, each of the two series running for about thirteen episodes; as well as cartoon shorts such as Walt Disney’s ‘Silly Symphonies’ (1928–39). Disney’s first feature length animation, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, opened on 21 December 1937, to great acclaim.

Rob Roy from page to screen Scott’s Rob Roy was published on 31 December 1817 as part of his Waverley series of twenty-five long historical prose narratives. The first edition of 10,000 copies sold so quickly that a second impression of a further 3,000 was needed after just a fortnight. The three-volume novel became the clear bestseller of 1818 and sold steadily over the next two decades, with 40,000 copies purchased by 1836. Scott dominated publishing in the romantic period, ‘the Author of Waverley’ selling ‘more novels than all of the other novelists of the time put together’ (St Clair: 221). Small wonder, then, despite contemporary criticism of the novel’s plotting, that it made its way into film as early as 1895 in Rob Roy/Jamies, The Burlesque Scotch Dance, directed by W. K. L. Dickson. Gaumont’s short, An Adventure of Rob Roy, (1911) continued the practice of using the novel as an imaginative springboard. That year also saw the first genuine adaptations of the novel, enabled by multi-reel projection, with Britain’s first three-reel feature, United Films’ Rob Roy directed by Arthur Vivian, and Jean Durand’s Une Aventure de Rob Roy. The United States followed in 1913 with their three-reeler directed by O. A. C. Lund, with a further British adaptation in 1922 directed by W. P. Kellino for Gaumont starring David Hawthorne and Gladys Jennings. If the novel was significant in the history of the British mass media as the first full-length feature film, it was also, in 1923, the first play to be broadcast on radio in and from Scotland and the first simultaneous broadcast, in its repeat transmission to other stations, from a local station (McDowell: 16). After a long hiatus Disney adapted the story for the big screen in their Rob Roy The Highland Rogue (1953) directed by Harold French. The novel’s character-driven narrative worked better for television’s series format than it did for film, and the BBC produced a seven-part series adapted by E. J. Bell with Tom Fleming as the eponymous hero in 1961, followed by BBC Scotland’s six-part series dramatised by Tom Wright and starring Andrew Faulds in 1977. The most recent broadcast adaptation was for BBC radio in 2003. Over forty years after the novel’s last cinematic appearance Michael Caton-Jones directed Rob Roy (1995) starring Liam Neeson and Jessica Lange. How much Alan Sharp’s original screenplay owes to Scott’s original

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novel is di∞cult to quantify. Sharp, an experienced Hollywood thriller and Western screenwriter, arguably draws more on the narrative conventions of those genres in his reworking of the legend than he does on Scott’s novel, and whereas the early films and the television and radio series explicitly acknowledged their debt to Scott, the author is not credited in the film. Indeed, it is instructive to compare the history of the media’s appropriation of Scott’s work to that of another nineteenth-century Scottish bestseller, Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886). Based on another legend, that of Edinburgh’s grave-robbing Deacon Brodie, Stevenson’s novel has been adapted around 100 times for cinema, television and radio throughout the world, far in excess of the modest achievements of Scott’s work. However, Stevenson’s work, while it has much to say about the duality of man, has little to say, at least directly, about the author’s home country. While Rob Roy has not been the most adapted of Scott’s works (Ivanhoe [1819] has that distinction), or indeed of any works by a Scottish author (there are more adaptations of Barrie’s The Little Minister [1891], for example), it has arguably been one of the most influential in terms of the screen media’s representations of Scotland’s Highland landscape and its mythological past. Richard Butt

Scottish film culture became increasingly consolidated at an institutional level with the creation of film societies, guilds and libraries. In 1929 the Film Society of Glasgow was founded, followed in 1930 by the Edinburgh Film Guild and the Scottish Educational Cinema Society. In 1931 Glasgow Co-operative Film Library was set up, and in 1933 Glasgow mounted Britain’s first amateur film festival. The Scottish Film Council (SFC) was established in Glasgow in June 1934 with the approval of the recently formed British Film Institute. In 1938 the first Films of Scotland Committee was set up by the Scottish Secretary of State and the Scottish Development Council with the stated object of fostering and encouraging the production of Scottish films of national interest. The first seven documentaries the committee produced were primarily for the 1938 Glasgow Empire Exhibition. In a radio talk on Scottish film documentary, pioneer and Films of Scotland Committee member John Grierson noted that, ‘We want to see these pictures of Scotland all over the country, so that Scotsmen themselves might learn a little more of what was happening under the surface of national life’ (McDowell: 5). While this was a productive decade for cinema, radio was slow in taking hold in Scotland. By 1939, only 784,000 of the 9 million radio

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Figure 1.2 Poster advertising the play Rob Roy at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, 1909.

licences held in the UK were held in Scotland (Macdonald: 14). The cost of receivers for a nation relatively economically poorer than England only partly explains the Scottish resistance to broadcasting. Potential audiences were alienated by the now centralised BBC’s Southern England, metropolitan middle-class character, embodied in the RP accent of its announcers until the 1960s, a view that was shared by the Scottish press and BBC sta≠ in Scotland, who criticised the medium for

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its lack of specifically Scottish items. Nonetheless, those with vested interests in the other entertainment and news mediums were concerned about the commercial impact of this new medium on their operations, although this fear had been dismissed by the 1926 Crawford Committee on Broadcasting (Macdonald: 28). While the BBC began its television service in 1936, this service had not been extended to Scotland by the time war started, and with its onset television production ceased and the dual radio service was replaced by the Home Service Programme. Aside from BBC Scottish Orchestra and Church of Scotland religious services, there was initially little in the way of specifically Scottish material and audiences north of the border felt largely uncatered for until 1942 by which time, alongside Scottish news items, a more varied national programme included: a series entitled Roads in Scotland about the Scottish countryside, Scottish Portraits on the work of famous Scotsmen, variety in the weekly Scottish Half-Hour, a Children’s Hour, Scottish news, some Gaelic broadcasts, contributions to schools programmes . . . drama, and coverage of anniversaries such as the St Andrew’s Day broadcasts. (McDowell: 47) Nonetheless, by the end of 1943, the Ministry of Information (MOI) were still commenting on the Londoncentric-ness of the institution. The MOI had become fully operational in 1939. Its Scottish Regional O∞ce at the Scottish O∞ce, in conjunction with the SFC and the Scottish Educational Film Association, ran the Evacuation Film Scheme, using film library resources to maintain a number of travelling film units throughout the winter of 1939–40 in the rural areas of Scotland (Ferns). In September 1940 the MOI’s Non-Theatrical Film Scheme was formed to organise special shows of films for: the Canteen Audience of the factory, among Civil Defence workers and in the remote rural areas . . . For all these audiences special techniques and special films were evolved: so that the units were not only showing films of war interest, but were also assisting in training these audiences in special skills essential to their war work or illustrating problems of a social character which were likely to be of significance to their lives. (Boyle: 65–6)

The post-war period and the coming of television After the war broadcasting at last became a major threat to the other leisure industries. Scottish regional broadcasting returned with the

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launch of the BBC Scottish Home Service in 1945, heralding a ‘golden age’ in high quality domestic programming. Amongst the mix of programmes was Arts Review, which included literary criticism, and radio adaptations such as Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Sunset Song for the Home Service, and of Stevenson’s Weir of Hermiston. Television finally reached Scotland in March 1952, the formal opening of the service from Broadcasting House in Edinburgh featuring the kilted senior announcer, Alistair MacIntyre, introducing ten minutes of Scottish Country Dancing. As for radio, take-up was initially slow, with potential audiences wary of the quality both of reception and of programming, particularly given that, with no television studios in Scotland, it was all coming from south of the border, aside from outside broadcasts of sport and the Edinburgh Festival. The Edinburgh International Film Festival began in 1947, and in 1952 the second Films of Scotland Committee was set up by the Secretary of State for Scotland. The primary function of the committee was to administer funds for the production and promotion of films of national interest by attracting sponsors from industry, local authorities and national organisations to finance individual films. Amongst these were documentaries on Scottish writers, including Sir Walter Scott: The Practical Romantic (1969) financed by the three main Scottish banks; and Hugh MacDiarmid: No Fellow Travellers (1972), financed by the British Linen Bank. The Scottish Arts Council financed Norman MacCaig: A Man in my Position (1977). Commercial television arrived in Scotland in 1957. There were many arguments against maintaining the BBC’s monopoly, but the continued existence of a range of newspapers in the UK was seen as evidence that advertising, on which the quality press such as The Scotsman and the Glasgow Herald depended more than the tabloids for their revenue, would not necessarily undermine the programming output of commercial television. Scottish Television Ltd (STV), which produced programmes for central Scotland, was the first and largest of the three Scottish providers. Chaired by Roy Thomson who had bought control of The Scotsman just two years earlier, its programmes, including Scotsport, documentary producer John Grierson’s This Wonderful World, and the variety show One O’Clock Gang, were immediately popular with the Central Belt audience. This competition finally resulted in the opening of BBC television studios in Glasgow and Edinburgh, which followed both radio and film in adapting Scottish literature in the form of television plays and drama serials such as Para Handy (1959–60).

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The 1960s Both Border Television and Grampian Television began broadcasting in 1961, with the latter particularly successful in attracting the north-east Scotland audience with its local and topical programming. By 1962, with three commercial companies and the BBC all serving Scotland, television had finally become a major source of entertainment in Scotland and a significant threat not only to radio, whose evening audience figures in particular were declining, but to the other cultural industries. Partly as a result of the proposals contained in the Pilkington Report (1962) on broadcasting, and partly in response to the US-style programming of the commercial channel, the BBC’s output in the 1960s and early 1970s became less paternalist and more populist. However, the press, the Saltire Society and the Scottish National Party continued throughout this period to express their view that despite the quality of particular programmes, such as the adaptations and drama serials that the BBC’s Glasgow studio specialised in such as Dr Finlay’s Casebook, The Vital Spark and The Master of Ballantrae, and Peter Watkin’s groundbreaking docudrama for the BBC, Culloden (1964), Scottish programming on both television channels remained in various ways inadequate. This inadequacy was the result of the limited finances of the regional broadcasters, the unwillingness of London controllers to increase regional opt-out, and the tendency of competing with the opposition by using popular London-based programming. For audiences in Scotland this meant a choice that included crime series such as Z-Cars (BBC) and The Avengers (ABC), serials such as Coronation Street (Granada), Emergency Ward 10 (ATV) and Dixon of Dock Green (BBC), comedy such as That Was the Week That Was (BBC) and Bootsie and Snudge (Granada), the BBC’s popular music programme Juke Box Jury and Granada’s flagship current a≠airs programme World in Action. Further options were available to audiences with the arrival of BBC2 in Scotland in 1966, although reception problems, an initially justified perception that it was a highbrow minority channel, and its limited hours of broadcasting, resulted in no change to the equal audience share between BBC and ITV. Nonetheless, BBC2 brought Scottish audiences the highly popular drama serial The Forsyte Saga and US Western series The Virginian, as well as the documentary series The Ascent of Man, America and Civilisation from Jacob Bronowski, Alistair Cooke and Kenneth Clark respectively, and the BBC Scotland production Weir of Hermiston. Colour television arrived to all three channels in 1969.

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The 1970s: the domestic and radical press By the 1970s the Scottish press was in a paradoxical position. That is to say, 84 per cent of all daily papers and 74 per cent of all Sundays read in Scotland in 1976 were printed there (Hutchinson: 78), a reflection of their superior coverage of local and regional news and sport. Yet, with the acquisition of The Scottish Daily Express by Trafalgar House in 1977 ownership was concentrated in an oligopoly of five conglomerates only one of whom, D. C. Thomson, was Scottish. Their activities encompassed the daily and Sunday papers, comics and most of the domestically produced magazines as well as domestic broadcasting, specifically Radio Clyde, Radio Forth, Scottish Television and Border Television (Hutchinson: 83–4). This was not at all unusual in the media industries, and the process of acquisitions, takeovers and mergers accelerated from this decade onwards. Against this centralisation of media power there emerged radical and alternative press in the early half of the decade such as Glasgow News (1971–5), Fort William Free Press (est. 1973), and Aberdeen People’s Press (1973–6). The West Highland Free Press (est. 1972) was typical of these papers in its mix of news, reports of local meetings, shinty reports, writing in Gaelic and a column of comment on national a≠airs, a diet similar to that of the BBC’s Aberdeen station in the 1920s and 1930s. The arrival of the pirate radio stations Radio Caroline, Radio London and Radio Scotland in the mid-1960s was part of a period of rapid change for radio which also included the restructuring of BBC radio from the Light, Home and Third programmes into Radios 1–4; the expansion of the BBC into local radio; and the network’s embrace, following the success of the pirates, of popular music. While England had BBC local radio from 1967, with twenty stations by 1971, Scotland’s only ‘local’ provision was Scottish opt-outs from Radio 4. This changed significantly with the Sound Broadcasting Act’s (1972) authorisation of commercial local radio. Radio Clyde became the first Independent Local Radio (ILR) station in Scotland at the end of 1973, launching its transmission on Hogmanay. With a geographical reach in the West of Scotland that covered nearly 2 million people, and programming which clearly responded to regional audience research, Radio Clyde was immediately popular. BBC radio responded to this competition by increasing the quantity and nature of its Scottish opt-out programming. The re-emergence of Scottish nationalism in the 1970s increased the pressure on broadcasters to address the social and cultural needs of Scotland as a nation. This was echoed within the BBC in Scotland in its desire for increased devolution from London, better radio and

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television coverage in Scotland in terms of geographical transmission and improved regional and national radio provision, and a will to produce more programming for the networks. This eventually resulted in organisational restructuring, the establishment of a number of regional radio stations in the North of the country from 1976, including the bilingual Radio Highland and Radio nan Eilean, and the transition of Radio Scotland into a fully independent network radio station in 1978 after some fifty years of regional opt-out of London-based network radio. While good audience figures were achieved by BBC Scotland television programmes such as The Beechgrove Garden and Scots comedian Rikki Fulton’s Scotch and Wry, Radio Scotland’s first two years of confusingly mixed and under-funded programming received the kind of critical reception that had beleaguered domestic television production the previous decade and the result was a decline in its audience share. Within two years it had forged a clearer sense of its identity, and regular programmes such as Good Morning Scotland and Sportsound had helped turn its audience figures around. However, the quantity and quality of Scottish television continued to be viewed as largely inadequate by critics and audiences alike.

The 1980s and 1990s In the 1980s the broadcasting environment became increasingly pluralistic with minority and niche programming and independent production more significant. These features were crystallised in the remit of Channel 4 (est. 1981), with the expansion in the number of BBC community and Independent Radio Stations in Scotland, and the arrival of multi-channel and multi-region cable and satellite television and radio in the mid-1980s. But less than a tenth of the total number of terrestrial programmes available in Scotland were actually made there and those programmes that were, were dominated by news and current a≠airs, with STV’s Scotland Today responsible for over a quarter of the company’s total annual hours of transmission, an average of only eleven hours of television a week in 1984, compared to a total of only eight hours for features and documentaries (STV 1985: 37). But, as for film, it was in its indigenous production of domestic fiction that television remained particularly weak; STV’s rural soap Take the High Road, for instance, accounting for twenty-eight of the company’s mere thirty-four hours of drama production in 1984. Further deregulation in the 1990s was accompanied by mergers, takeovers, consolidation and the emergence of media conglomerates across the media field. For instance, Scottish Record and Sunday

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Mail, one of the subsidiary companies of Mirror Group Newspapers, acquired 20 per cent of the share capital of STV who themselves had just completed a strategic alliance with Flextech plc giving STV a 20 per cent stake in HTV, the ITV contractor for Wales and the West Country (STV 1995: 4). Scottish TV and Grampian TV were incorporated into the Scottish Media Group, along with SMG TV Productions, Ginger Television and SMG Broadcast and Event Solutions. At the time of writing SMG is the sixth largest programme producer in the UK. But the changing political economy of broadcasting had only a small e≠ect on the domestic television production. Writing in 1990 Gus Macdonald, then managing director of Scottish Television, argued that while the 1980s saw a yearly increase in the production of domestic drama, television companies in Scotland needed to increase their investment in producing dramas that international audiences wanted to watch. This is the case not only because ‘fiction on tape and film is the dominant commodity in an international entertainment industry’ (Macdonald 1990: 193), but also because the cost of television drama production can only be met if the drama is networked outside Scotland. As for film production, the domestic market is not big enough to generate the necessary revenue. By ITV’s criterion, where a peak time drama series is considered a hit only if it achieves audiences of over 9 million, Taggart was the ‘only one big hit over the past ten years’ produced in Scotland, with even critical successes like BBC Scotland’s John Byrne’s Tutti Frutti averaging only 3.3 million (Macdonald 1978: 197–8). In the mid-1990s Scottish Television Enterprise’s big drama hit was McCallum, which starred John Hannah as a forensic pathologist working in London. Alistair Mo≠at, chief executive of Scottish Television Enterprise observed that its success was significant because it demonstrated that his company’s ‘ambition to create successful drama will not be restricted by geography’ (STV 1995: 12). But it equally demonstrated that with the notable exception of Taggart, Scottish produced television dramas set in Scotland that have been hits have not been original scripts but adaptations of Scottish literature. These have included: Hamish MacBeth (1995–7), based on the novels by M. C. Beaton; Compton Mackenzie’s Monarch of the Glen (2000–); The Crow Road (1996), a fourpart adaptation of Ian Banks’ family mystery saga; adaptations of four of Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus novels (2002–); and of Christopher Brookmyre’s comedy thriller Quite Ugly One Morning (2004). There is a similar story in film. Cinema admissions, which had been diminishing since the peak of 1.6 billion in 1950, reached an all-time low of 54 million in 1982. Government support of the industry e≠ectively ceased, the Films of Scotland Committee was dissolved, and

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of the ever-decreasing percentage of the few British films that were produced that made it onto the screen, very few were Scottish. Again, those Scottish films that were successful were largely adaptations. Danny Boyle’s version of Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting (1996), Lynne Ramsay’s reworking of Alan Warner’s Morvern Callar (2002) and David Mackenzie’s evocation of Alexander Trocchi’s 1954 novel Young Adam (2002) heralded a new Scottish cinema in form and substance, while the first three screen versions of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels made £167 million at the UK box o∞ce alone.

Conclusion A diverse and global mass media competes for Scottish audiences and readers and the domestic media vary in their ability to attract this audience. The Scottish public benefit from a highly competitive newspaper market that ranges from The Scotsman and The Herald to the Largs and Millport News, preferring Scottish daily and local newspapers over the nationals south of the border. Radio Clyde has maintained its prominent share of the radio audience, but for their visual entertainment Scots opt for networked rather than Scottish television programming and Hollywood over Scottish film. Where the domestic mass media have produced popular quality fiction, it has been almost entirely reliant on the literary products of Scottish publishers.

The Professionalisation of Publishing David Finkelstein The trajectory of Scottish publishing fortunes has been marked by nineteenth-century expansion and twentieth-century contraction and specialisation. Throughout the twentieth century Scottish publishing faced a period of change in audiences, business structures and world markets. The First and Second World Wars saw businesses su≠er under wartime strictures and rationing, as well as the loss and death of skilled personnel. The 1950s through to the 1980s brought on a period of merger of former family-owned businesses as they were bought out, restructured and reconfigured alongside other media assets (film, music and television production) as part of larger, multinational, multimedia conglomerates. Scottish publishing, in line with general UK practices, shifted from a static, paternalist system of operations to one incorporating transnational activities and complex levels of professionalised organisations and players. Between 1880 and 1920 new professional organisations were started to safeguard and represent the interests of various sectors of publishing and printing. These included the Society of Authors (founded in 1884), the Publishers Association (founded in 1896), and the Associated Booksellers of Great Britain and Ireland (founded in 1895). In Scotland corollary organisations were founded, such as the Scottish Booksellers Association in 1896. Also as part of this evolution, by the beginning of the twentieth century, international copyright treaties had been agreed and trade organisations had been founded to regulate, manage and standardise world trade, further supporting transnational circulation of texts. After the Second World War, international book publishing began a process of shifting from self-contained, nationally-based organisations to absorption into large, transnational corporate organisations. Multinational 31

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media mergers begun in the 1960s would reshape the economics of book publishing and books, accelerating a professional restructuring of Scottish publishing started earlier in the century. International trade organisations and agreements were created to standardise and manage world trade in both general and book specific areas. It is not coincidental that, as Eva Hemmungs Wirtén points out, ‘[T]he first major international public unions, the International Telegraph Union (1865), soon followed by the Universal Postal Union (1874) are concerned with the intensification in international communication’ (2003: 31). Following this were, among others: the organisation and standardisation of time through the creation of the International Date Line (Greenwich Meridian Time) in 1884; the setting up of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in 1875; the founding of the International Labour O∞ce in 1901; and the development of the Universal Radiotelegraph Union in 1906. The issues underpinning the founding of these organisations and unions in the early stages of each emerging technology ‘was not the creation of a single authority to manage world a≠airs’, as Held et al. note, but rather ‘the establishment of regulatory regimes for, in principle, the predictable and orderly conduct of pressing transnational processes’ (43). Such developments, along with further activities during the second half of the twentieth century, linked into a steady move in book publishing to a position strongly dependent on mass market strategies. As Richard Ohmann comments, ‘Publishing was the last culture industry to attain modernity. Not until after World War II did it become part of the large corporate sector, and adopt the practices of the publishing and marketing characteristic of monopoly capital’ (22). To increase economies of scale, there was a tendency from the 1960s onwards to join publishing houses together through mergers to form large, often transnational conglomerates. The general traits and practices of family-run and focused publishing houses began to be replaced by international corporate and economic business structures. It became part of a move by some to join together di≠erent ‘media platforms’ for maximum e∞ciency and profitability (thus bringing books, newspapers, television, film and music industries together under one roof ). The Scottish firm Thomas Nelson & Sons, for example, founded in 1798 and for long a pre-eminent source of religious, educational and such a≠ordable pocketbook series as the famous Nelson’s Classics, was taken over by the Anglo-Canadian media corporation Thomson in 1962, then dismantled and amalgamated with other media acquisitions, such as the children’s, academic and educational lists of Glasgow-based Blackie & Son, bought in 1991 and then

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Figure 1.3 Jacket image of Directory of Publishing in Scotland.

broken up. In 2000 the merged remnants were amalgamated with the publisher Stanley Thornes to become Nelson Thornes, a subsidiary of the multinational Dutch information services firm Wolters Kluwer. The last forty years of the twentieth century saw similar restructurings and mergers amongst Scottish-owned publishing firms. In 1962, after more than sixty years under the control of the Thin and Grant families, Oliver & Boyd was acquired by the Financial Times organisation. Later its publishing arm was sold o≠ to Longmans (later Longman Pearson), and in 1990 its Edinburgh operations were shut down and the firm ceased trading due to failure to achieve high enough profit levels for its parent company. The law publishers W. Green & Son Ltd, based on the High Street in Edinburgh opposite the law courts in Parliament Square, merged with Sweet & Maxwell in 1956, which in turn was acquired by Thomson Corporation in 1987; and William Blackwood & Sons merged with Edinburgh printers Pillans & Wilson in the early 1980s. A similar fate awaited the venerable Glasgow family firm William

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Collins, which remained in private ownership until 1981, then fought o≠ mergers until 1989, when it was taken over by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation and merged with the equally esteemed US publisher Harper & Row, acquired by News Corporation in 1987. The Edinburghbased cartographers Bartholomews & Sons were also absorbed into the organisation in the 1990s. The result was the publishing heavyweight HarperCollins, headquartered in London and New York, but with a warehouse, reference and cartographic base in Glasgow, thus maintaining a link to the firm’s Scottish past. While publishing businesses in Scotland were being restructured in

Scottish Publishers Association As the publication of books became separate from their physical production and also from their sales during the nineteenth century, publishing also became professionalised, and the nationwide Publishers Association, based in London, was founded in 1896. Large publishers originating in Scotland, such as A. & C. Black, Blackie, Constables and Nelsons became members. William Blackwood was a member of the first council (Kingsford: 216–17). In 1974, amid a debate on devolution, there was a resurgence of interest in Scottish culture, and alongside it a revival in publishing companies based in Scotland, rather than nominally Scottish firms based in London. The suggestion that a separate association for Scottish publishers might be beneficial had previously arisen, and the time was now ripe. The original body, named the Scottish General Publishers Association (the word general was soon dropped), consisted of a group of ten to twelve Scottish publishing firms. By 2000 SPA membership had grown to around eighty (SPA 2000: 5), and had diversified to include subsidiaries of large plcs with Scottish roots, or a strong Scottish association, for example HarperCollins, which included the imprint of William Collins, originally established in Glasgow. A large minority of the membership were institutions, trusts or libraries, but the majority of full members (about 60 per cent) were owned by private shareholders, individuals or small traders. About three-quarters of the membership was based in Scotland’s Central Belt, and two-thirds of that total was based in Edinburgh. The aims of the association as originally constituted were to raise the profile of Scottish publishers and provide for their specific needs, such as: information and assistance for members; centralised training which did not involve trips to London; co-operative book promotion facilities, particularly to open up overseas markets. In addition, the SPA o≠ered regular bulletins, advice on overseas selling and access to a library of resources. Some additional services were charged for, for example: representation at trade fairs

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both within the United Kingdom and abroad; training; joint promotional activities, such as media campaigns; and access to the SPA’s distribution company, Scottish Book Source, established in 1995–6. Among its many initiatives was the establishment of the Scottish Book Marketing Group as a joint venture with the Scottish branch of the Booksellers Association. Initially run as a three-year project, it lasted until 2002, promoting Scottish books on television, and through a programme of events, promotions and prizes. As the SPA’s membership grew, it became necessary to distinguish categories of member. The criteria for full membership are: the individual or company must have published at least two books by authors ‘other than the principals of the company’; should be intending to develop a list; and be based in Scotland. Other categories of membership are Small Press (for businesses or organisations starting in publishing and non-commercial publishing ventures wishing to develop their expertise), Library membership (for libraries which also publish books), and Associate Membership for individuals or organisations who do not fulfil the criteria for full membership but whose ‘aims are compatible’ with those of the SPA. The professional status of the organisation is made clear on the association website: self-publishers and vanity publishers are specifically excluded (SPA 2000). Stephanie Wolfe Murray, who chaired the SPA during the 1980s, believed that its greatest long-term importance lay in representing Scottish publishers at book fairs and in the provision of Scottish-based training, both achieved with very few sta≠. To start with a part-time administrator worked from home but as the organisation grew, a full-time administrator was appointed and the association acquired an attic o∞ce in South West Thistle Street Lane in Edinburgh. These premises, though cramped and at the top of a long staircase, are remembered fondly by many in the Scottish publishing world. In the early 1990s, the association moved to Dundee Street, Edinburgh, where it shared premises with the Edinburgh Book Festival, and with the Scottish Book Trust, previously based in Glasgow, creating the Scottish Book Centre. This allowed the cross-promotion of general information activities resources including the SPA’s resource library. Helen Williams

the twentieth century, the general business of books and markets was undergoing similar change. The increasing value of literary property created space for new intermediaries such as literary agents to filter and promote the ‘raw’ material prepared for mass consumption. The literary agent would become one of the many innovations marking twentieth-century shifts in Scottish book market economies. Agents’

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Figure 1.4 Jacket image of Thirtieth Anniversary of the Scottish Publishers Association.

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expertise in negotiating intellectual property rights in a variety of areas outwith books (such as the emerging mass media areas of film, radio and from mid-century onwards, television) shifted power to determine literary ‘value’ from publisher to author. Their skill lay in recognising and perfecting the mediating role of the literary agent as arbiter and evaluator of literary property, or more precisely, as one commentator noted, in ‘participating in, and in fact becoming the source of, the valuation of copyright’ (Gillies: 22). Early agents such as the Scot A. P. Watt, who began his career in 1882, James Brand Pinker, who opened his agency in January 1896, and the formidably successful transatlantic American agent Curtis Brown, who started working in London in 1899, perfected negotiations of material reproduction rights in a bewildering range of new outlets extending beyond standard print media boundaries. By 1925, for example, there were common cases of agents negotiating over twenty-six di≠erent rights to a book, including rights to playing card and cigarette packet pictures (Joseph: 92–3). With publishing growing more international in scope, particularly following the creation in the late twentieth century of multinational media conglomerates, the role of the literary agent has evolved in scale and importance; agents have become the main, initial ‘filter’ of textual material presented for trade publication, replacing the publisher and publishers’ reader as initial arbiter of literary value, and negotiating contracts and valuation of individual talent in sports, film, television, radio and other entertainment arenas. The expansion of their role has ensured another element has been added to the professional structure of publishing.

Scottish PEN Scottish PEN was founded in 1927 by C. M. Grieve (Hugh MacDiarmid). Strictly speaking its title is the Scottish Centre of International PEN, which itself was founded in 1921 by the English poet and novelist Mrs C. A. Dawson Scott. The name PEN, obviously appropriate for a writers’ organisation, is also an acronym: Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists, Novelists. (From the beginning these categories have been flexible: nowadays the membership of Scottish PEN includes, for instance, children’s writers, critics, scriptwriters and translators.) The acronym has another meaning: in French, one of the o∞cial languages of PEN, it can signify Paix Entre Nous, Peace Among Us. The original and continuing aim of PEN is to foster friendship and understanding among the writers of the world, and, through its members, among nations. The website of Scottish PEN is headed

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Figure 1.5 James Meek, prize-winning novelist and journalist, who gave the 2006 Scottish PEN lecture at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

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‘Scotland’s first international organisation for freedom of expression’ (www.scottishpen.org) and freedom of expression is the central objective of all the organisation’s concerns and campaigns today. In common with the other national centres of International PEN, Scottish PEN, like Scottish writing, has always had a character of its own. Grieve invited a number of Scottish writers to join the new organisation, and his initiative attracted impressive names, many of them now legendary figures of Scottish literature. Helen Cruickshank, who succeeded him as secretary in 1929, thought them at first a ‘very mixed crew of professional and amateur authors’ (Cruickshank 1976: 75), but before long they included such names as Neil Gunn, Edwin and Willa Muir, Catherine Carswell, Naomi Mitchison, Marion Angus, Eric Linklater and R. B. Cunninghame Graham. Grieve himself had meanwhile moved to London, and a Dunciadstyle poem of 1934, ‘Welcome to the PEN Delegates’, indicates that he was by then less than enamoured of Scotland and its writers: ‘Genius of Europe, welcome to the land/ Fit least of all your gifts to understand’ (MacDiarmid 1985: 1299). Nevertheless Scottish PEN flourished, with monthly meetings, Makars’ Dinners (to celebrate Scots poets like Dunbar and Henryson), country outings and Christmas parties. If that sounds a little cosy, Scottish PEN has since its earliest days recognised the international dimension of the organisation, sending delegates to each of the annual International Congresses. At Oslo in 1928 the journalist William Power spoke in support of Scotland’s right to full national representation in International PEN. Other delegates had questioned this on the grounds that Scotland had ‘no distinctive national culture’. Power, ‘amusing myself to some extent [but] really annoyed’ (1937: 144), corrected them in a vigorous speech and won the day. MacDiarmid went to Vienna in 1929, finding it ‘the most beautiful and romantic and theatrical city I have been to’, and enjoying the conversation, the beer, and the tour of workers’ flats (MacDiarmid 1943: 106). Edwin and Willa Muir went to Budapest in 1932, where Willa sat on the floor in her hotel room and ‘grat for the fate of Central Europe’ (Cruickshank 1976: 84). Douglas Young attended several congresses in the years after the Second World War (Young), including Copenhagen in 1948, where the Charter still followed by all PEN centres was formally adopted. (It can be found in full on the Scottish PEN website.) By 1934 Scottish PEN was su∞ciently well established to host an International Congress. Three congresses in all have been held in Scotland, in 1934, 1950 and 1997, and reports of them supply valuable snapshots of PEN and world concerns at these discrete moments in time. The 1934 congress had the theme of liberty of expression; taking place in the shadow of an approaching war, it was attended by several exiled or persecuted German writers who had personal experience of imprisonment and book-burning.

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The 1950 congress had the innocuous theme ‘The Future of Drama’, but there were objections (some by Hugh MacDiarmid) that the keynote address was not about drama but about the Cold War. The 1997 congress, which marked the seventieth anniversary of the Scottish Centre and took the theme ‘Identity and Diversity’, was intended to reflect the situation of a new Scotland in a new world on the cusp of a new century. The run-up to the 1997 congress was the occasion for considerable reorganisation and strengthening of Scottish PEN. The structure of committees and sub-committees was overhauled and the names of the current committees to some extent speak for themselves. The Writers in Prison Committee with its Rapid Action Network follows up cases of persecuted writers, and can report the release of some prisoners, though many remain ‘imprisoned . . . disappeared . . . suspected killed’. Writers in Exile supports writers who have been forced to leave their homelands. Writers for Peace aims to foster writing that contributes to a culture of peace. The Women Writers Committee, which has foregrounded Scottish women writers in its poster ‘The Hundred Writers’, campaigns for all women who still find di∞culty in getting their voices heard. The Translation and Linguistic Rights Committee is concerned with the languages of Scotland and with marginalised and endangered languages worldwide. All these campaigns are ongoing, and with some 250 members at present Scottish PEN is currently as active, principled and enthusiastic as it was when Hugh MacDiarmid founded it in 1927. Moira Burgess

Other factors also play their part in shaping how publishing in general, and in Scotland in particular, now operate within a competitive, multinational business framework. The changes have been dramatic. In 1861 it was estimated that in Edinburgh alone printing and allied trades employed over 3,000 people. Even until the 1960s, Edinburgh’s printing industry employed between 5,000 and 6,000 workers (Reynolds: 11). A recent Scottish Arts Council report, however, demonstrates the decline in numbers since then, noting that in 2004, while there were roughly eighty-five publishers working in Scotland, mostly small, independent and niche market publishers, they employed only a total approximately of 1,250 sta≠ (Sinclair et al.: 8). In response, Scotland’s small, independent firms have sought ways of defending their position in global terms, chiefly through such means as shared marketing via the Scottish Publishers Association, online retailing and promotion activities, and niche market concentrations. It remains to be seen where such e≠orts lead in the twenty-first century.

Library Provision in Scotland John Crawford The year 1880 is not particularly significant in Scottish library history, although it was in that year that Andrew Carnegie gave his first grant to fund a new (free) public library in his home town of Dunfermline. Carnegie was to become famous as a major promoter of libraries, and while it is true that philanthropy was the major policy initiative in the second half of the nineteenth century, most philanthropists patronised only one library, usually that intended to serve their own local community, thus re-emphasising the fundamental role of community in the development of the publicly available library in Scotland. Although patronage had existed since the seventeenth century it became much more important from the 1840s onwards because only private patronage could raise the necessary money to fund the construction and equipping of buildings, sta≠ and materials’ budgets. Despite the passing of the first Public Libraries Scotland Act in 1853 most library activity was still the product of local voluntary e≠ort and libraries were usually small and organised employing very simple methods that had not changed much in 100 years. They were based mainly on small population units and administered in an amateur although not necessarily amateurish fashion. An Act was passed in 1887 consolidating existing library legislation, the basic premise of which was that local authorities could spend no more than the product of a penny rate on library services. This remained unchanged until 1919 when the rate limitation was raised to three pence (Aitken: 1, 52–5, 61, 65). Although the penny rate has been criticised as inadequate, for the most part it generated higher incomes than those available to the voluntary sector, so provision must have seemed reasonable to contemporaries, when compared with what they had been used to. The penny rate did not, however, generate su∞cient 41

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Figure 1.6 Airdrie Public Library, 1959.

income for initial purchase of plant and equipment and traditional philanthropic strategies continued. The Act applied only to cities and towns which were, for the most part, small. The movement made slow progress up to 1897 when Carnegie grants became available. Progress was made in two main areas: 1. In market towns where the ‘free library’ took on the traditional community character 2. In large towns like Dundee, Perth or Paisley where local philanthropists could compensate for resource deficiencies. By the mid-1890s there were thirty-two free or rate-supported libraries. Patronage by minor local figures had been a key factor in bringing them into being. Although the future lay with them they were numerically, at least, swamped by the voluntary sector which still continued to survive and indeed expand. There were, at the time, a total of some 467 publicly available libraries in Scotland. Public (ratesupported) libraries had a total membership of 105,402, about 2.5 per

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cent of the population and they were more successful in recruiting women members than other types. Because they were free their issues greatly exceeded all others and, in addition to a lending service, they usually provided reference and newspaper (reading rooms) libraries. Only three, however, provided services to children (Crawford 1993: 87–8, 122–38).

Airdrie Public Library, 1853–1975 Airdrie was the first town in Scotland to adopt the Public Libraries (Scotland) Act of 1853. The decision did not come from nowhere. A subscription library had been established in 1792 and in 1837 it was taken over by the local Mechanics’ Institute. This was, in turn, bought for £40 from the Mechanics’ Institute to form the basis of the new public library’s stock. For twenty years the library had no distinctive characteristics that we would now attribute to a public library. As with most underfunded libraries, accommodation was a chronic problem. It was originally opened in a room in the Town Hall in 1856 but was moved to a larger room in the Market Buildings in 1860. It moved again in 1877, returning to the Market Building in 1885. During this period (1878) a newspaper reading room was opened and the overall opening hours lengthened. Reading rooms were a common feature of public libraries at the time, as they were considered a vital service and could be kept open for long hours with minimal sta∞ng requirements. In 1894, by which time the library had 1,000 readers (average figure at the time was 1,583) and a stock of 10,000 volumes (average figure at the time was 7,192 volumes), a new, purpose-built library building was opened in the town’s Anderson Street, mainly funded by Andrew Carnegie, who gave £1,000. As well as a lending library, there was a reference library, a separate ‘Ladies’ room’ (a form of positive discrimination favoured at the time to encourage women to use libraries), a reading room, a museum and an observatory. The ‘library, museum and art gallery’ model in which the museum was usually the poor relation was common at the time but the addition of an observatory was very rare. Many local societies met regularly in the library, giving it the overall character of the area cultural centre, showing that it had successfully continued the mutual improvement/informal educational values of the early years of the century. In 1899 membership reached 1,800. By 1911 the building was becoming too small to meet demand and the decision was taken to erect a new one. In 1913 Carnegie promised a grant of £5,500 if the town provided a free site. Because of the First World War the issue lay dormant until 1923, when the recently founded Carnegie United Kingdom Trust o≠ered an increased grant of £10,000 which the

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Airdrie Savings Bank supplemented with the o≠er of a free site. The new building was opened with great ceremonial in 1925, an example of the sober, neo-classical style then coming into favour in the design of public buildings, which replaced the exuberance of the Carnegie era. It is also an instance of architectural ‘contextualism’ as it was deliberately intended to resemble the nearby Savings Bank building. It was one of only three new public library buildings opened in Scotland in the inter-war period. The lending library had shelf space for 23,000 volumes which were freely available to the users on ‘open access’, rather than the ‘closed access’ methods where readers did not have access to the shelves and had to ask sta≠ for books. In Scotland open access was still viewed with suspicion. The reference library had space for 4,000 volumes. The opening ceremony was performed by Elizabeth Haldane of Cloan, best remembered now as a historian but during her time a leading library activist in her native Perthshire and a member of an informal network of activists. Her interests included Innerpe≠ray Library (est. 1680), Scotland’s first publicly available library. By 1956 the bookstock had reached 30,000 volumes, and annual issues 170,000. There was an annual budget of only about £7,500, but expenditure per head of population was one of the highest in Scotland. Although only a relatively small library serving quite a small community, it continued to be central to local cultural life. No branch libraries had been built, which at the time was seen as a deficiency but probably reflected the best use of limited resources. In most types of publicly available library a marriage of neutral patronage and local initiative resulted in an e≠ective, community based service. Its librarian in the post-war period, William Scobbie, was one of the most dynamic Scottish public librarians of his generation. The library ceased to exist as an independent entity in 1975 but continues to o≠er a service to the public today, including the observatory. The help and support of North Lanarkshire library sta≠ is gratefully acknowledged in the writing of this study. John Crawford

Thanks to the benefactions of Andrew Carnegie most Scottish burghs had adopted the various Acts by 1909. The main period of adoption was 1899–1908 when forty libraries were founded, compared with thirty-three in the period 1853–98 (Aitken: 76, 79, 349). Carnegie patronised fifty-four local authorities in Scotland (65 per cent). Just as important, and hitherto disregarded, is Carnegie’s patronage of nonrate-supported libraries and reading rooms. These grants, mainly

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small, were for the most part given to fund, partially or wholly, the erection and stocking of small village libraries and reading rooms. Some 118 of these grants were made, of which eighty-eight went to Scotland (Smith 1974, vol. 1: 65, 107–21). This shows that Carnegie retained some links with the old community tradition, despite his commitment to free libraries. His most significant legacy, however, was unintentional. In funding the extension and consolidation of the rate-supported movement he brought into being a network of small, under-funded burgh library services which became the basis of Scotland’s public library system and e≠ectively replicated the old community tradition in a new administrative guise. Although library provision in the Lowlands was extensive by the late nineteenth century, except in a few areas like West Lothian and Peeblesshire, developments in the Highlands had been slow by comparison. By the end of the century, however, there was evidence of local initiative. Argyllshire had nine village libraries; Sutherland had five; and Highland Perthshire, Ross and Cromarty and Caithness had two each. This reflects decisive changes in the Highlands, notably in the last fifteen years of the century. By mid-century steamer services had penetrated to the northern coasts and to the islands. This was followed by the railways, reaching the sea at Thurso in 1874, at Mallaig in 1894 and at Kyle of Lochalsh in 1898. In the remote parish of Gairloch in Wester Ross serious road building did not begin until the 1840s and yet by the 1870s the parish boundary was only four miles from the nearest railway station at Achnasheen. This facilitated community development which included book and periodical use: Poolewe Public Hall, which included a reading room, was opened in 1884 and by 1912 the parish had at least six Coats libraries (see below) and a reading room at Inverasdale on Loch Ewe side. Two Acts of Parliament are fundamental to the development of community library activity in the Highlands. In 1872 the Education (Scotland) Act introduced compulsory elementary education. At this time sign-literacy in the Highlands was restricted to 65 per cent of men and 49 per cent of women as against national averages of 89 per cent and 79 per cent respectively, but by the end of the century illiteracy had virtually disappeared. Furthermore a network of elementary schools was built throughout the Highlands, providing many rural communities with their only public building and where small libraries might be housed. The position in the Highlands, therefore, became similar to the prosperous areas of rural Scotland earlier in the century. Secondly, the Crofters’ Holding Act of 1886, by guaranteeing security of tenure to

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Figure 1.7 Edinburgh Central Library.

crofters, had the indirect e≠ect of creating settled communities in which community development of an educational and cultural nature might take place. The Education Act, by specifying teaching through the medium of English, represented an attack on the Gaelic language. Contrary to popular opinion, the Act was supported rather than rejected by Highlanders. There can be little doubt that libraries took their cue from education and contributed to the decline of Gaelic. Such few printed catalogues as survive from the Highlands record few if any Gaelic titles. In 1887 Tongue Subscription Library, in Sutherland, had fourteen titles in Gaelic out of a stock of 2,623 volumes. Campbeltown (Ardesier) Public Library, near Inverness, had none at all, nor did Salen Public Library in Mull. In the 1830s 10 per cent of the stock of Kilbride Public Library on Arran consisted of Gaelic books. By the end of the century it was indistinguishable from any Lowland village library (Crawford 1993: 178–80). An active, if unsuccessful campaigner against the promotion of English by libraries was James Coats jnr, an eccentric Paisley businessman whose family was noted for philanthropic activity. Between about 1903 and 1908 Coats established about 4,000 libraries, each of about

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Figure 1.8 National Library of Scotland.

300 volumes, mainly in the Highlands and islands of Scotland (Crawford 1987). Although the collections were too small to be of longterm value they did plug a gap in the Highlands, and because most of the libraries were sent to schools he can be claimed as the father of the school library in Scotland. Unusually, the libraries contained Gaelic books and because of the relative lack of Gaelic titles Coats even arranged for at least three English language titles to be translated into Gaelic.

P. M. Dott Memorial Socialist Library In December 1937, the P. M. Dott Memorial Socialist Library was formally opened by Harold Laski in the rather unlikely setting of 8 Grosvenor Crescent in Edinburgh’s West End (Kane: 164). It was founded in memory of Peter M’Omish Dott, proprietor of the Edinburgh art dealership Aitken Dott, established in 1842 (now the Scottish Gallery), and a long-term supporter of non-partisan socialism. After P. M. Dott’s death in June 1934, his younger son, Dr Eric Dott, seems to have suggested publicly that he was founding the library under a provision in his father’s will (The Scotsman 8

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June 1934; Rush). However, the will itself contains no such clause and the sum used (£3,000) approximates to Eric Dott’s inheritance.1 The library was not set up as a charity or trust, but became a private limited company with a capital of £100 in £1 shares in April 1939, with Dr Eric Dott as director. (According to Companies House, the company was dissolved on 29 December 1967, but all the documents relating to the company have been destroyed, so the details of its organisation and trading are no longer available.) A young socialist activist, Jack Kane, was appointed as librarian. He was soon to be elected to Edinburgh’s City Council as councillor for the Niddrie area of the city, and later became Edinburgh’s first Labour Lord Provost in 1972. He was supported by a group of volunteers and could draw on the expertise of an advisory committee for advice on book selection (Kane: 163–4). The Dott Library, as it was usually known, soon developed a substantial readership. After only nine months, when it had 1,000 members, and had made 8,000 issues, it moved to more central premises at 9 George IV Bridge (The Scotsman, 13 March 1938: 9). ‘Edinburgh’s only socialist Lending library’ now advertised a stock of 3,000 books on ‘socialism, fascism, peace, war, Spain, China, Czechoslovakia, Soviet Union, etc’ as well as ‘hundreds of left novels and plays’ which could be borrowed at the rate of 2d per book per week, during the opening hours of ‘3–10pm daily’ (Edinburgh Evening News, 1 Oct. 1938). In its new location, there was ‘a dramatic surge’ in membership. Members now included a significant proportion of students, including many from overseas, and it was possible to use the space to host meetings and lectures for the membership: speakers seem to have been mainly politicians but included figures such as J. B. S. Haldane (Kane: 174–5). The short period between its opening in December 1937 and Jack Kane’s call-up for military service in the Royal Artillery in 1940 seems to have been the Dott Library’s heyday. Jack Kane wrote that: the Dott provided both the literature and a forum for its discussion and so attracted the activists from all sections of the movement, the theoreticians, mostly from the universities, the Civil Service and the professions, as well as a fair number of armchair socialists. (Kane: 164) Although it continued to operate throughout the Second World War and Jack Kane returned to his post upon demobilisation, the library never again achieved the same level of use (Kane: 245). In May 1947, as well as a reduction in the trust fund due to ‘unfortunate investments’, the library was forced to move from its premises on George IV Bridge, when the building 1

P. M’Omish Dott, will, proved 24 Jan. 1935. NAS, SC70/4/702, fols 443–8.

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was taken over by the City Council. Initially, the collection went into storage, but the library reopened a year later on 22 May 1948 at 138 Dalry Road. On this occasion, the Lord Advocate, John Wheatley MP, made a speech during which he is reported to have said the library fulfilled a need ‘to counteract the anti-Socialist propaganda of a large percentage of the Press’ through making socialist literature available, and that politically minded people needed ‘to understand the fundamental principles of politics and economics if the future of Socialism was to be assured’ (The Scotsman 24 May 1948: 3). After this the history of the Dott Library becomes more obscure. Jack Kane notes, of the post-war period, that ‘the demand for our books was beginning to shrink’. The library apparently moved premises several times, and some time after 1950 the collection was disposed of by Jack Kane himself, before he found new employment with the Workers’ Educational Association (Kane: 246). The changes of address and reduced funds, while undermining the library’s existence, do not constitute the whole reason for its decline. Christopher Harvie (2000: 106) saw 1945, when the Dott Library began its attempt at a post-war revival, as the end of ‘Labour’s golden age’, and thus the changing fortunes of the Dott Library may simply reflect wider changes in politics and society immediately before and after the Second World War. Helen Williams

One of the key themes of the twentieth century was the link between libraries and education. In the old community era there were strong if uno∞cial links between libraries and education, because local schoolteachers were often intimately involved in library activity. However burghs were not education authorities, this privilege being reserved for county councils, which were not initially library authorities. The Education (Scotland) Act of 1918 created a county library service that provided a limited service to rural areas, replacing the old rural community-based services. This partially re-established the link with education but the new service was greeted with hostility by the burgh librarians who feared absorption. Although co-operation between burgh and county was possible it rarely happened in practice. The situation did not change until the second half of the twentieth century. The three-penny rate limitation was abolished in 1955 and for the first time a publicly funded library service became a statutory obligation. In 1975 local government reorganisation created two tiers of local authority: a small number of large regional authorities providing all major services including education; and forty-one second-tier authorities which administered ‘local’ services – including libraries (Midwinter: 20).

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School libraries, meanwhile, remained with the education authorities, with happy results, for by the early 1990s Scotland had as many school libraries as England. In 1996 local government was reorganised yet again and a new system of unitary authorities was created, thus allowing co-operation between library and education services. A key theme of the twentieth century was the decline of isolation and the growth of a professional agenda. This manifested itself initially in public libraries which pioneered the development of card catalogues, compiled according to standard (Anglo-American) cataloguing rules and the subject classification of bookstocks, the American Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) being the preferred option. This new ideology required new skills, an issue not addressed until the opening of Scotland’s first school of librarianship in Glasgow in 1946, followed by another in Aberdeen in 1969, which helped to promote a home grown ideology of professionalism. Partly as a result of the growth of public expenditure in the 1960s, public libraries that had dominated the professional agenda since the beginning of the century fell into relative decline. In the early 1960s professional librarians began to be appointed, initially to further education colleges and central institutions, and, thanks to the Robbins Report, university library sta≠s expanded and more sta≠ obtained professional qualifications in addition to their university degrees, thus encouraging the penetration of a professional ideology in higher education libraries (Crawford 1993: 283). Recruitment into privilege user group libraries like further education and central institutions was initially from public libraries, which manifested itself in the growth of standardised organisational procedures like the use of DDC and Anglo-American cataloguing rules. The transformation of some further education colleges into central institutions, and the further transformation of those central institutions into universities in 1992 contributed greatly to the standardisation of university library practices in Scotland, compared with the diversity that had existed among the much smaller number of higher education libraries in the early 1960s.

Scottish Poetry Library Scotland’s cultural relationship with poetry has always been a mixed one. On the one hand, it has had its share of iconic bards, from Walter Scott to Hugh MacDiarmid, Iain Crichton Smith, and of course its national treasure, Robert Burns, whose life and works are celebrated every year on 25 January across the Scottish diaspora in ceremonial fashion combining food,

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whisky, song and poetry. The elaborate ritual surrounding Burns led Hugh MacDiarmid to rail against the ‘ersatz Scottishness’ of such events, where poetry was used to create a somewhat false and evanescent sense of Scottish identity. Such events can also suggest a rich engagement with Scotland’s poetical heritage. On the other hand, they can mask what poets throughout the twentieth century have criticised as a lack of substantial infrastructural support for contemporary poets and the publication, promotion and reception of their work. What does exist – the Scottish Arts Council with its writer’s bursaries, the Edinburgh Book Festival with its readings, and the Scottish Poetry Library with its events, outreach programmes and mobile lending library – are all initiatives dating from the second half of the century. The idea for the Scottish Poetry Library began to take shape in the early 1980s. At the 1982 Sydney Goodsir Smith memorial lecture, given by the poet Norman MacCaig, attendees were invited to join the Scottish Poetry Library Association. Spearheaded by poet Tessa Ransford, the organisation initially sought a space where published works of poetry could be gathered, retained and lent, and from where readings and other initiatives could be launched to educate, inspire and enhance the understanding and enjoyment of the life and work of Scottish and international poets. Underpinning this idea was a strong sense that Scotland’s poetical traditions in their various languages needed a centre to make them materially visible and accessible. Much was out of print, not to be found in libraries or universities, not catalogued or cared for. The reference collection at the Mitchell Library was the only previous source. The original librarian, Dr Tom Hubbard, worked hard to develop a rich collection of Scottish, European and international poetry for public use. The Scottish Poetry Library was o≠ered a space to rent in Tweeddale Court, o≠ the High Street in Edinburgh, which had once housed the Edinburgh publisher and printer Oliver & Boyd, famed for its educational publications. It seemed appropriate that a former packing room would remain linked to the world of books and education. Through years of gradual development, funded through small grants and private donations, the library began a dedicated outreach programme, nurturing among other activities poetry workshops and a popular annual series of summer Festival Courtyard Readings as well as a major international event every year in St Cecilia’s Hall with visiting poets’ work often translated into Scots and Gaelic as well as English. Other initiatives included hosting overseas poets-inresidence, regular postal lending and touring bus lending library services. The Scottish Poetry Library also initiated the Scottish Poetry Index of literary magazines, and built up poetry library collections in existing libraries in various part of Scotland.

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In 1999, with funding from the Scottish Arts Council Lottery Fund and other sponsors, the main headquarters of the Scottish Poetry Library was relocated to a new, purpose-built centre in Crichton’s Close, a former brewery site further down the Royal Mile in the Canongate. The move was a culminating point in an almost twenty-year struggle to sustain and develop the library, and in particular allowed the library to house fully its greatly expanded book collection, which had grown from 300 items at its inception to over 30,000 when the transition to the new building was completed. Similarly its catalogue, begun as a dozen small sheaf binders of typed pages, was developed into an in-house, automated catalogue called INSPIRE, and migrated online shortly after the move of premises. Having achieved these milestones, the library’s founding director Tessa Ransford (who was awarded an OBE in 2000 for her work at the SPL) demitted o∞ce at the end of 1999. Robyn Marsack, New Zealand-born editor and translator, was appointed as director in January 2000, charged with taking the library forward into the new century. David Finkelstein

Currently libraries of all types in Scotland face an uncertain future in which they are increasingly becoming providers and mediators of electronic services which they did not create themselves. Librarians are becoming educators, facilitators and ‘value adders’ and the ancient custodial role is rapidly disappearing. With the wisdom of hindsight early indicators of the nature of changes can be seen. The first library service to be privatised was the reading room because librarians believed that users could buy newspapers for themselves and that the space thus freed up could be better used for other services. In 2007 the internet is the first information option for a majority of users who are more likely to consult it at home than in a library (see for example MORI Social Research Institute Understanding the Audience, 2005, available at http://www.common-info.org.uk/mori-findings.shtml). Three key themes appear over the period: 1. The decline of isolation as Scottish librarianship has become more susceptible to outside influences and part of a worldwide network 2. The decline of the amateur tradition and the rise of professionalism 3. The decline of the small administrative unit. Does anything of the past survive? Historically libraries have enjoyed the support of all social classes and all major political groupings. However, as the twentieth century proceeded, attention focused

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Figure 1.9 Scottish Poetry Library.

increasingly on the role and support of government. In the present century the new Scottish Executive has policies on lifelong learning and digital inclusion, but none, at time of writing, on information literacy. Time will tell.

The Business of Publishing Iain Stevenson The economics of publishing are at once simple and complex. Books are straightforward commodities that are purchased by readers and then either stored or discarded. Unlike other commodities they are not perishable, demand no special storage conditions, and are not consumed during use. They require no special equipment to use and are relatively lightweight and easy to transport. The supply chain from producer to market is comparatively short and uncomplicated. And yet books do have several particular features that make them very unusual items of trade indeed, and which make their economics unique and distinctive. Every book title is di≠erent and reacts in the market in a unique and often unpredictable fashion. The product is the result of the application of aesthetic, critical and technical skills involving many di≠erent individuals and requires sophisticated techniques of co-ordination and forecasting. Apart from a few categories of publishing, books are discretionary purchases whose markets can be volatile. The purpose of this section is to provide a broad overview of the publishing economics that generally characterised the twentieth century, using where possible Scottish examples and taking a historical perspective. Although the terminal date of this book is 2000, the opportunity will be taken to speculate on possible future developments. Apart from a few specialised areas like government and charitable publishing, book publishing exists to provide a return on capital invested that can either be re-invested in further publishing or distributed to investors. Successful publishing is therefore an entrepreneurial risk-taking business that thrives when it gets its forecasts of what the market will absorb at particular prices right, and falters when its assessments prove over-optimistic. All businesses are risky, of course, but all publishing is fundamentally about gambling with public taste and

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demands a particular flair for spotting trends and analysing opportunities. Scottish publishers have historically been notably entrepreneurial and successful in recognising and developing book markets at home and abroad. A number of factors have promoted the entrepreneurial success of Scottish publishers. Publishing is a relatively low capital entry business, but a sound banking infrastructure in Scotland has enabled even modestly capitalised enterprises to obtain investment. Locally-based banks like the Clydesdale in Glasgow extended credit to houses like Blackie who received £30,000 in 1919 to finance post First World War developments (Munn: 205). In fact, Blackie’s association with the Clydesdale Bank was particularly close. Three members of the house served on the bank’s board, and Blackie published the bank’s centenary history in 1938 (Reid). Nevertheless, the bank was also an active investor in competing publishing houses like Collins and Chambers. A second factor favouring publishing development in Scotland was the demand for books created by distinctive educational and legal systems, which led to the creation of publishers to serve their requirements, like Robert Gibson & Sons in school publishing and W. Green & Son in law. Although these markets provided a solid base of business, their restricted size encouraged Scottish publishers to seek expansion outside Scotland, and using the skills tested in the domestic market, they expanded abroad. William Collins and Thomas Nelson became international leaders in religious and educational publishing, while Adam and Charles Black and W. & R. Chambers dominated non-fiction and reference publishing, although the former moved their editorial base to London in 1891 (Black 1957: 56). The business organisation of publishing houses was at the beginning of the period relatively simple. Most were partnerships but as they grew and needed greater injections of capital most took on limited liability and encouraged external shareholders. For example, Blackie began life in 1809 as a loose partnership between three friends, John Blackie, Alexander Fullerton and William Somerville, and was formally incorporated as Blackie & Sons Ltd in 1890. Until the 1980s, the shares in most firms were under family control, but since then most companies have been acquired by multinational bodies in perhaps the ultimate logical conclusion of the global businesses pioneered by Scottish publishers. Collins is now part of Australian News International, Chambers and Gibson are part of the French group Hachette, and Nelson and Blackie were absorbed by Canadian International Thomson.

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A family a≠air Working in publishing in the early part of the twentieth century was very much a family a≠air both in terms of ownership and management, and in terms of the company’s employees. A. S. (Tony) Chambers, for example, joined the family firm in 1936 but he had been acculturated to its activities and its practices by the experiences of his paternal grandfather, C. E. S. Chambers, and his father, R. S. Chambers. Theirs was a profession for gentlemen: his grandfather ‘seemed to take his work fairly easily; took plenty of holidays, playing golf, shooting and fishing . . . My grandfather, I am sure, had a coach and a chau≠eur. He lived in Belgrave Crescent. I don’t think he knew anything about the business side at all. He left that to the accountant.’ The Belgrave Crescent address is redolent of Edinburgh’s prosperous upper middle class, a status confirmed by the coach and chau≠eur. The young Tony Chambers watched his own father take the tramcar to the o∞ce in the morning and return in the evening, occasionally to host a dinner with some of the company’s authors and editors, particularly contributors to Chambers’ Journal, many of whom were personal friends. There was every expectation that Tony would join the family business – ‘It was an easy option for me; I knew nothing about anything else’ (Chambers 1999: 111) – and he did so in November 1936. His starting salary was £70 per annum at a time when university lecturers were paid £300–£400 but he was undertaking an apprenticeship on a fast track to a managerial position. He had no prior qualifications of any sort and began a round of all the departments within Chambers to learn what went on within them. He was sent to the Leipzig Book Fair, then at the centre of the German and international book trade. He spent mornings at the works of T. & A. Constable, the company’s printers, learning about production methods by touring the di≠erent sections from typesetting to printing, and he passed the afternoons reading unsolicited manuscripts for Chambers’ Journal. He accompanied sales representatives around bookshops and began to develop a network of contacts as well as a feel for the market. This leisurely apprenticeship was interrupted by war service from 1939 to 1945. On his return he was made a director of the company, placed in charge of advertising and promotion, and then after a few years became company chairman. Both his own children followed him into the family firm for short periods but neither remained, itself an index of the continuing professionalisation of publishing discussed by David Finkelstein above. Dynasties could be formed by employees as well. Tony Chambers’ predecessor as chairman – R. S. Chambers had died in 1940 at the early age of 52 and the circumstances of the war and Tony’s service in it had entailed the drafting in of a non-family member as chairman – had been A. Turnbull

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who had been with the company since 1930. His son, A. R. (Archie) Turnbull, left the army in 1945 after a successful career as a commando and, like many young men in his position, found it di∞cult to adjust to post-war mediocrity. A period of unsettled employment in di≠erent locations was followed by a job in Chambers, courtesy of his father: Well, I was employed by my father and I read proofs of Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary for a long time. [Laughs] It was very, very boring. I produced several guidebooks. I did one on Ireland when I had a red line going round the coast and German tourists rang me up and said they presumed that this was a motorway. [Laughs] It wasn’t. (McCleery and Finkelstein: 35) After three years of irreverent working for his father and Chambers, Archie Turnbull left to take up the new post of secretary of Edinburgh University Press (EUP) (see Section 4 below). He was joined there in 1960 by Walter Cairns, later literature director of the Scottish Arts Council, but then as an editor at EUP. Walter had served his apprenticeship at Thomas Nelson & Sons where his father had also worked. His form of entry into publishing should not be allowed to divert attention from his keen editorial eye, his strong stress on design and production values, and the utter professionalism that he showed throughout his career; Walter Cairns, however, was probably among the last to enter Scottish publishing through immediate family connections. With the demise generally of family-owned publishing houses – the one exception being D. C. Thomson – greater emphasis is placed on prior qualifications. These can come through involvement in student publishing, as in the case of Bill Campbell of Mainstream (see below in this Section), work placement, as in the case of Jamie Byng of Canongate, or through specialist courses such as those at Napier or Stirling Universities, as in the case of Ron Grosset of Geddes & Grosset. Gentlemen (and ladies) they are all, no doubt, but they are also professionals who have earned respect for that professionalism. Alistair McCleery

The largest single cost element in publishing is the creation of the publication itself, usually referred to as TPPB (typesetting, print, paper and binding). Over the period, book manufacture underwent enormous technical change as hot-metal typesetting, steam-driven presses and hand-sewn case binding gave way to computer controlled typesetting, o≠set-lithography and perfect binding for paperbacks (Stevenson 2003). Although book manufacture today is virtually unrecognisable from that in 1900, the cost fraction of manufacture in relation to the

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final published price has remained remarkably constant at about onefifth. The relationship between the individual elements of TPPB have, however, dramatically changed. Typesetting is now very much cheaper than it once was, while paper has become much more expensive, especially if environmentally sustainable or archival material is required. Printing (or ‘machining’) has remained relatively stable as a proportion of cost. A distinctive feature of Scottish publishing was the ownership of printing plants by the publishers which, the university presses aside, was a relatively rare feature in England and the United States. The reason for this arises from the origins of many Scottish publishers in stationery manufacture, engraving or jobbing printing, whereas the major English publishers, like Longman, Macmillan or Cassell had their origins in bookselling. Thomas Nelson with their Parkside Works in Edinburgh, William Collins with the Clear-Type Press in Glasgow, Blackie & Son with the Villafield Press in Bishopbriggs established large industrial book manufacturing plants which were equivalent in size to the major English book manufacturers like Richard Clay and William Clowes. Even much smaller publishers, like Oliver & Boyd in the cramped medieval close of Tweeddale Court o≠ the Canongate in Edinburgh owned and operated their own presses and binderies until at least the 1930s. The economic consequences of owning their own plants were twoedged. It provided capacity and competitive pricing which enabled them to develop new lines quickly and cost-e≠ectively. The agility with which Collins, and slightly later Nelson, were able to exploit the new market for cheap ‘sixpenny and shilling’ classics in the early 1900s came in part from their ability to produce huge print runs cost-e≠ectively on their own presses. Interestingly, until the advent of Penguin Books in 1935, the only English publishers to compete in this mass-market arena were Oxford University Press and J. M. Dent, each of whom owned their own printing works. Although some publishers attempted to keep their manufacturing operations at arms length (until 1890, Blackie’s printing operation was a separate company, W. G. Blackie), there is little doubt that despite heavy investment in plant and skilled craftsmen, this practice brought considerable economic benefits in lower prices and bulk purchase of materials. It also, however, brought inflexibility and susceptibility to technological obsolescence. Although most printer-publishers took a little work from outside, they all looked to their publishing departments to provide a steady flow of books to produce. As markets expanded this made economic sense, but during times of retrenchment, as following the First

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World War and in the 1930s, the presses could be expensively idle. Trade publishing is a seasonal business and it may not be fanciful to suggest that the reason the Scottish printer-publishers tended to maintain a diversified list in education, reference and religious publishing as well as trade, while other publishers specialised, may have had something to do with the need to feed their presses regularly. Eventually, of course, maintaining large scale industrial operations proved unsustainable and one by one the publishers’ printing works closed as the costs of converting to modern technology defeated their finances. A few smaller houses abandoned publishing and concentrated on printing like Morrison & Gibb (who bought Nelson’s printing business in 1965) and R. & R. Clark, but they in their turn have succumbed to commercial pressures, although Pillans & Wilson (now Pillans & Waddies) continue to thrive as specialist printers. Interestingly a few overseas publishers where Scottish management styles were influential, like the University of Toronto Press in Canada and Wilson & Horton in New Zealand, operated a very similar printer-publisher model and have encountered the same problems of economic inflexibility. The fundamental calculation of a publisher’s business is to decide how many copies of a book should be printed and what price should be charged for it. This decision is based on informed experience of similar titles, market intelligence, competition and the indefinable gut feeling of the publisher of what feels right. At the beginning of the period, the ‘price points’ at which books were fixed by the publisher were very stable: a ‘three-decker’ novel would be priced at 18s (90p), a single novel at 6s (30p), later at 7s 6d (37.5p), while non-fiction depending on binding and content was priced between 8s (40p) and five guineas (£5.25p). Once the initial typesetting and make-ready costs had been amortised, it was possible to produce cheaper editions at 6d (2.5p) or 1s (5p) ultimately leading to the ‘paperback revolution’ of Allen Lane’s Penguin of 1935 which saw the ‘new reading public’ purchase mass literature at 6d a copy (McCleery 2002). Until 1935, book purchase was therefore largely an upper- and middle-class expenditure and print runs tended to be remarkably small. For many novels even from ‘best-selling’ authors initial print runs of 1,000 copies or fewer were common. While paper and machining remained relatively cheap, it was the usual practice for publishers to ‘run-on’ flat sheets to be stored for later binding either at the original price, or as a cheap edition. Flat sheets were also commonly exported to be bound in overseas markets, particularly the United States. This approach tended to reduce the initial unit cost of the book, thereby increasing the publisher’s margin, although the e≠ect was frequently

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only temporary if the sheets were never used and had to be written o≠ and ‘wasted’. As paper and printing costs increased this option became much less attractive, and with modern accounting emphasising the cost of stock as a heavy load on the balance sheet, publishers have recently sought to reduce stock levels to eighteen months’ expected sales or less. This has tended to reduce print runs although they are on average now rather higher than they were 100 years ago. Technological improvement has meant that in real terms books are considerably cheaper: the current price point for a new hardback novel is between £14.99 and £16.99 with the retail prices index for 2005 being roughly ninety times that of 1905. Another factor encouraging price stability was the ‘Net Book Agreement’ (NBA). Introduced in 1900 between the recently-formed Publishers Association and booksellers, this authorised publishers to fix the final retail price at which any book could be sold, provided publishers and booksellers were signatory to the agreement. Designed and advocated by Sir Frederick Macmillan, it was initially challenged by undercutting from the Times Book Club, but it persisted much longer than that immediate threat, and eventually became one of the few legally recognised examples of resale price maintenance to survive into the deregulated 1980s. Attracting equally fervent detractors and supporters, the NBA was argued to create a level playing field between large and small booksellers and promote diversity, while its existence was thought by some to reduce competition and consumer choice. Its abolition in 1995 came after large publishers felt it was no longer sustainable and its chief executioner was HarperCollins led by its then Scottish chairman, Eddie Bell. An enduring consequence of the NBA was a standard and inflexible system of discount terms that publishers o≠ered to bookseller, irrespective of quantities ordered. ‘A terms’ (35 per cent discount) were o≠ered on all popular titles, ‘B terms’ (25 per cent) on titles that were judged less popular, and ‘C terms’ (20 per cent) on titles that would be taken on special order only. The few titles that were ‘non-net’ (mainly school books) were discounted at 15 per cent. While this enabled both booksellers and publishers to anticipate their margins securely it tended to depress sales and of course favour the publisher’s profit line. The post-NBA situation with widespread point of sale discounting and trade discounts spiralling to 50 per cent and more has benefited the purchaser, but it is arguable whether it is sustainable for publisher or retailer. Other than discount, the other major point of contention between publishers and booksellers is the right of return for full credit. This

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practice began in the 1930s as a temporary response to recession but it is now established virtually universally that books are supplied to retailers on ‘see safe’ basis, and if unsold can be returned carriage free to publishers for full refund. E≠ectively, sales to retailers are never firm and this causes havoc with publishers’ forecasting and reprint decisions.

Salamander Press Salamander Press had Scottish roots. Mary Selwyn and her husband Tom Fenton started their private press in the front room of 73 Morningside Park in Edinburgh. Tom rescued an Adana press about to be thrown away by Edinburgh College of Art, and after attending a roup (auction) in Glasgow where he was able to salvage several chests of type (now in the keeping of Edinburgh University Library), he learned how to hand-set printing type from Alan Anderson who ran the nearby Tragara Press. Applying arts and crafts principles of natural materials and honest labour appealed to the Fentons’ socialist outlook and underpinned the values of the press. Encouraged by James Fenton, Tom’s brother, who visited the 1980 Edinburgh Festival, and originally self-financed by Mary’s part-time nursing as well as Tom’s job at Wester Hailes Education Centre, the press adopted the colophon of the salamander because of the adaptability and endurance of the creature. Flowers of the Salamander Press (1980) a copy of the press’s type ornaments appeared before six hand-set copies of the first edition of James Fenton’s poem German Requiem (1981). More copies of the poem came o≠ the press late at night with the assistance of Charlie Boxer, their lodger and a history student. Priced at £1 each, the pamphlets sold locally mainly by word-of-mouth. Salamander Press then published 200 copies of James Fenton’s The Memory of War. Poetry formed the basis of the early Salamander Press: Andrew Motion’s Independence (1981) and later Secret Narratives (1983) as well as Craig Raine’s A Free Translation (1981) and John Fuller’s Waiting for the Music (1982) established Salamander Press as a significant publisher of poetry. The founding quartet of Salamander poets gave poetry readings together at the Traverse Theatre. Additionally, Salamander Press published Black Spiders (1982), a debut for Kathleen Jamie, born in Renfrewshire in 1962, a student of philosophy at Edinburgh University who won the 1982 Scottish Arts Council Book Award. Further, The Exquisite Instrument: Imitations from the Chinese (1982) by Edinburgh-born (1949) and based Ron Butlin, in a limited edition of 1,000 copies, won the Scottish Arts Council Book Award for 1983. Salamander Press also produced a series called The Traverse Plays (TTP). Their radical tone celebrated Scotland, Scottish playwrights and the centrality of the Traverse Theatre to new productions. The first playscript was

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Sailmaker (1981) written by Alan Spence (who later wrote the play Space Invaders (TTP 8) and short stories about Glasgow initially published by Collins in 1977, Its Colours they are Fine in 1983). The Traverse Plays linked current performances with published texts and John Byrne’s The Slab Boys (TTP 2), Cuttin’ a Rug (TTP 3) and Still Life (TTP 4, reprinted in 1983) published by Salamander in 1982 galvanised audiences and actors alike to purchase scripts. Andrew Dallmeyer’s The Boys in the Backroom (TTP 5), Marcella Evaristi’s Commedia (TTP 6), Rona Munro’s Fugue (TTP 7) and Stanley Eveling’s Buglar Boy and his Swish Friend (TTP 9) were all published in 1983. Between 1982 and 1983 the Salamander Press booklist grew quickly. Flying to Nowhere by John Fuller, shortlisted for the Booker Prize of 1983, won the Whitbread Prize for a best first novel, while in the same year, Jonathan Keates’ Allegro Postilions won the James Tait Black prize for fiction over and above the poetry book awards already mentioned. Salamander books were widely and enthusiastically reviewed for their attention to typographic design as well as for their content. The Salamander list extended to art, non-fiction and anthologies such as Margaret Gardiner’s Memoir of Barbara Hepworth (1982), Geo≠rey Grigson’s revised 1946 Routledge edition of Before the Romantics (1984) and Nicholas Garland’s Indian Journal (1983) as well as his Cartoons (1984). Cookery books and children’s books followed. Meanwhile Liz Lochhead’s Blood and Ice (1982) and Silver Service (1984) also came out in Salamander Press editions. What began as a small venture changed rapidly into a significant publishing house. Tom Fenton joined the Scottish Publishers Association in 1982. He visited the Frankfurt Book Fair and saw that the possibility of rights’ sales could expand the prospects and finance of the press. By May 1983 Salamander Press joined the Scottish Companies Register and operated from attic rooms at 34 Shandwick Place, where black Sirius computers (an innovation in their own right) hummed with sales statistics. The first Edinburgh Book Fair took place in August and September 1983 and was a timely showcase for new Salamander publications. Mary, Tom and investor Jennifer Law became board members of the company. John Fuller replaced Jennifer Law in 1984. The press generated a large amount of media-related activity. Networks of authors, artists, writers, poets, playwrights (sometimes a combination of all five talents), their children and friends became part of the vortex that made Salamander Press function in the theatre, on the radio and on TV. By the spring of 1984 Salamander had nearly thirty authors and forty titles in production. But changing business circumstances meant that it was di∞cult to reconcile costs with revenues. One strategy to deal with the frenetic pace of

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development was to revise the distribution of books and sales to bookshops. In January 1984 Fenton signed an agreement with Carmen Callil to organise book sales via thirteen representatives from the warehouses of the already merged companies of Chatto, Virago, Cape Services and Bodley Head (CVCB). A supporting strategy involved obtaining extra financial resources. Michael Palin took a place on the board as Mary left. Neither strategy solved the cash flow predicament. Another strategy to save the press involved joint publications with Penguin as noted in The Bookseller, August 1985. In vain: an article in The Times in May 1986 by Amanda Craig indicated that Viking (the hardback publishing arm of Penguin) would help with further rights sales and the CVCB connection would remain. The momentum of the first publishing successes had been lost and the Salamander Press closed and o∞cially ceased trading in 1993. Some accused the press of being a hermetically sealed circle of Oxbridge friends (Hewison). But on the evidence of Scottish poets, playwrights and book collectors, Salamander Press drew in the best writers and artists available. It revived high values of book design; it depended heavily on the advice and help of Scottish readers and audiences; and it produced its main works in Scotland. Rosemary Addison

Publishers have always taken the lead in marketing books by producing catalogues and point of sale material for booksellers, arranging author presentations and providing gratis copies for review to newspapers and magazines. Catalogues and new book announcements have been frequently bound in to the rear of books and when dust-jackets appeared from the 1880s, they too were used to promote other titles, although both of these practices have fallen away since 1960. Press advertising, once a major marketing conduit, has also dwindled although newspapers like The Scotsman and The Herald devote much more space now to book reviews than they once did. Traditionally, sales for Scottish publishers were made by ‘travellers’ who would visit booksellers on a regular cycle, solicit orders and check stock and be remunerated on a (small) salary and sales-related commission. Pre-publication orders (‘dues’) would be accumulated and would be influential in helping determine print run. Unlike London publishers who would maintain a ‘trade counter’ where booksellers’ messengers could daily replenish book stock, Scottish houses, whose customers were more geographically spread, relied heavily on their travellers as their main link to market. It became almost traditional for Scots book salesmen to migrate to senior positions in English houses.

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Order fulfilment and distribution tended to be operated out of publishers’ own warehouses. A few very small companies shared facilities, and wholesalers were never very prominent in Scotland although John Menzies of Edinburgh and Holmes MacDougall of Glasgow provided consolidation and specialist services (the latter to educational customers). Menzies, founded as a bookseller in Edinburgh in 1833, withdrew from retailing in 1999, selling its shops to W. H. Smith, and disposed of its book wholesaler THE in 2000, in a management buyout. Scotland now has no home-based book wholesaling. The smallness of the Scottish domestic market made it essential that Scottish publishers look abroad to expand their businesses. A few, like Black and Collins, saw England as the main opportunity and relocated their editorial bases to London but most publishers of any size, Oliver & Boyd, Blackwood, Blackie, Nelson among many others, maintained London sales o∞ces and showrooms. Several publishers sought markets further afield. Nelson in particular developed exports strongly and by 1945 had established a branch in Melbourne, and subsidiary companies in New York, Toronto and Paris. The subsidiaries maintained a vigorous local publishing programme and sales o∞ces in India and Africa controlled from Edinburgh achieved strong sales of educational titles. Publishers too small to justify branches or subsidiaries overseas made use of commission agents, and Macmillan & Co., widely established in the British Empire and the United States, were the leading providers of agency services.

Mainstream Mainstream was founded in the cultural optimism of the 1970s; 1978 was a year, just before the failed referendum on devolution of 1979, when all seemed possible and Scottish culture possessed a self-confidence and selfassurance. In the absence of any ‘internal colonialist’ cringe, new ventures like Mainstream – and others such as Canongate and Richard Drew – appeared appropriate and robust extensions of that sense of national selfrenewal. Its founders, Bill Campbell and Peter Mackenzie, had a background in the Edinburgh University Student Publications Board (EUSPB), later Polygon, which gained a reputation for radical and forward-looking titles on topics such as land ownership and political identity, including The Red Paper on Scotland edited by Gordon Brown in 1975. It was perhaps surprising then that Mainstream’s first publication should have been an edition of Robert Louis Stevenson’s previously unpublished diaries, The Cevennes Journal, the basis of his popular 1879 Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes, but, in retrospect, it is probably testimony to the financial

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canniness of the partners in attempting to minimise their risk. Mainstream had started on a shoestring; £1,000 had been borrowed from the bank on the pretence of a ‘home improvement’ loan and Peter Mackenzie put in a further £1,000 to underwrite the first title; the company’s premises, and warehouse, were Bill Campbell’s flat; and he himself hawked the books around bookshops. Credit from the printers was used in a race to produce su∞cient revenue to pay the bills. That fragility persisted until the publication of Alex Ferguson’s A Light in the North: Seven Years with Aberdeen in 1985. The autobiography sold 26,000 copies and also gave Mainstream a non-Scottish, profitable niche in sports biographies and sporting books generally. Ferguson himself signed 600 copies in an hour at John Menzies in Aberdeen. The book grew out of Campbell’s opportunism; he had been the first to contact Ferguson with the idea of the manager collaborating on an autobiography in the wake of his successes with Aberdeen FC. That opportunism was to be seen again in Mainstream’s publication of James Mackay, William Wallace: Brave Heart in 1995 just as Mel Gibson’s film was released. Campbell took copies of the book to the USA for the film’s première there and the title became one of the company’s steady bestsellers. However, Campbell’s acumen failed when he passed on the opportunity to become the then unknown Ian Rankin’s publisher. The expansion of Mainstream has been rightly steady and canny. In the early 1980s, 60 per cent of the company’s sales were in Scotland; by the closing date of this volume, 2000, the figure had dropped to 25 per cent. By 1990 Mainstream’s turnover had risen to £1.3m; by 2000 it had reached £3m. The company used distribution centres in North America, Australia and Asia; it had sold rights to a diversity of other publishers worldwide; and its front and back lists contained a variety of titles on topics from MI6 through football hooliganism to the autobiographical books of Eugenie Fraser about her early life in Russia before her residence in Morningside. However, its origins were clear in its decision to undertake Duncan Macmillan’s Scottish Art 1460–1990 in 1990. This was an expensively produced and generously illustrated survey of a Scottish tradition in the visual arts that by its very existence made a statement about cultural autonomy. The Scottish origins and the sporting niche came together in a series of books on Scottish football: The Glory and the Dream, on the history of Celtic; Bill Murray’s Glasgow’s Giants: 100 years of the Old Firm and former Celtic and Rangers player Maurice Johnston’s autobiography Mo. The company’s beginnings may also account for Mainstream’s willingness in the past to seek sponsorship and co-publication and it has worked with such organisations as the National Trust for Scotland, Mobil, Scottish Opera and Alloa Breweries. Although its partners have on occasion

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expressed ambivalence about Scottish Arts Council support for publishers, sharing at times the view that any commercial enterprise has to be able to stand on its own which reflects their own successful struggle to succeed, SAC funding has been accepted for particular projects such as Scottish Art 1460–1990. This pragmatism lies at the heart of Mainstream’s success; it underpins a willingness to go where the markets are and a refusal to be tied down by an uncommercial commitment to purely Scottish fiction that has undermined some of its contemporaries founded in the same ‘white heat’ of national self-confidence. Outside Scotland, few would have labelled Mainstream as a ‘Scottish’ publisher by 2000. That, and the vulnerability of a company still dependent on the dynamism of its two founders after almost thirty years, may have been behind Mainstream giving up partial independence to sell 50 per cent to the Random House Group in 2005. Alistair McCleery

Authors can be remunerated by three main methods: first, by an outright fee for their work, secondly by royalties calculated on the sales of their works, and third, by entering into a ‘share-profit’ agreement with the publisher. Scottish publishers have used all three methods, although royalties is by far the most common. Outright fees, often involving the purchase of copyright, were used by those publishers, like Chambers and Blackwoods, whose businesses included periodicals, although they became less common during the twentieth century. ‘Share profit’ agreements, which normally involved the author putting up a sum of money to support publication and after publisher’s costs and overheads had been paid dividing the gross proceeds equally with the publisher, tended to be applied to specialist or potentially slowmoving titles. They were attractive to cash-starved publishers but in the long-term they tended to make the publication unworkably unprofitable. The Edinburgh medical publisher E. & S. Livingstone made extensive use of share-profit in the 1930s and some contracts persisted well into the 1980s. Royalties are calculated as a percentage of retail price (although now more commonly on ‘net sums received’) and are remitted to authors directly or via their agent annually or semiannually in arrears (usually six months) with usually a proportion held back to cover returns. Royalties vary between 5 per cent and 15 per cent, sometimes with an ‘escalator’ (a stepped increase in rate) as sales thresholds are reached. Advances against royalty, usually paid in three stages on contract signature, on manuscript delivery and day of publication are set o≠ against future earnings and are ‘earned out’ (or not) as sales are achieved.

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The ‘intellectual property’ (IP) in books has long provided publishers with subsidiary sources of revenue. Rights to translation are sold to foreign-language publishers on a fee or royalty basis although typically Nelson’s French company (Société Française des Éditions Nelson) was set up directly to exploit its copyrights in another language. The licensing of volume rights to another larger publisher can generate a greater income flow than the first publication. For example, Edinburgh publisher Polygon sells Alexander McCall Smith’s The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series in hardback and trade paperback formats; however, it prefers to licence Abacus (a branch of multinational Hachette Livre) to publish the books in mass market paperback format, probably producing much greater net revenue for itself and its author than it could have achieved on its own. Other subsidiary rights include serialisation, adaptation (for many years Oliver & Boyd’s contracts bizarrely provided for ‘the right of adaptation as an operetta’), digest, ‘one-shot’ and quotation among others (Owen). Income is usually divided between publisher and author although material adapted for the blind is normally not charged for. A source of revenue that has recently become significant is the licence fees collected by the CLA for institutional photocopying. Another significant revenue stream is that from ‘properties’, characters or situations owned by publishers that can be licensed to others for use in toys, games, foodstu≠s and other products. Dundee publisher D. C. Thomson owns many property characters and their licensing of them generates significant income. Publishing has proved remarkably economically resilient over the past century. It has survived technological and business upheaval, the trend to globalisation and changing public taste. Although Scottish publishing is less powerful now than at mid-twentieth century when Edinburgh alone counted over sixty independent houses (of which only three survive), there has been a remarkable renaissance in new publishers like Birlinn, Canongate and Black & White whose success has been admirable in cultural, critical and profit terms.

Role of the Scottish Arts Council The SAC provides direct grants to publishers. These are mainly given to defray production costs on specific titles. The SAC carries out an assessment that is based upon both the literary, artistic or cultural merit of the book or books concerned and the estimated financial projections. Individual grants range from £500 to £2,000 and there is no stated limit as to how many a company can receive in a financial year. The amount given to publishers for

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production costs fluctuated over the last ten years covered by this volume but the overall trend is downwards. Table 1.1 Grants to Publishers, 1990–2001. Year

Amount of Grant

1990–1 1991–2 1992–3 1993–4 1994–5 1995–6 1996–7 1997–8 1998–9 1999–2000 2000–1

£127,325 £104,900 £134,458 £120,927 £109,825 £112,120 £89,935 £104,900 £69,416 £107,725 £89,300

The direct grant scheme is a reactive one with publishers submitting appropriate proposals as they arise in their publishing programmes, and the downwards trend could be more indicative of the fact that fewer titles were being published during this period that met the criteria of the scheme. New schemes were, however, put in place by the close of the period, to which publishers could apply for more substantial grants for marketing projects and for commissioning titles. Pilot schemes such as the Programme Publishing Funds and the Creative Industries scheme at Scottish Enterprise, channelled via the SAC, have shown some success, as have funds coming from the National Lottery. The figures for 1999–2002 are given below for this category of funding. Table 1.2 National Lottery Grants to Publishers, 1999–2002. Year

Publishers benefiting

Amount

1999–2000 2000–1 2001–2

7 7 7

£455,357 £102,600 £296,475

The substantial Lottery-derived grant of £244,000 that was given to Neil Wilson Publishing in 1999–2000 to create a new fiction imprint, 11:9, based in Glasgow, illustrates some of the advantages and disadvantages of SAC support. The money was used to underwrite the publication of thirteen books (of a planned forty) by first-time Scottish authors. Although each of

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the authors received an advance of £2,000, most of the grant was spent on the support infrastructure including major promotion and marketing. The intention, to launch new Scottish talent in the wake of political devolution, was excellent and the personnel involved were experienced professionals but the books, with the exception of Jonathan Falla’s Blue Poppies, failed to make the hoped-for impact, particularly in the London-based media. (The imprint took its name from the date of the referendum on Scottish devolution but, in another example of best-laid plans falling prey to the unpredictable, this was also to be the date of the attack on the World Trade Center towers in New York, creating a subtle obstacle to e≠ective marketing of the brand in the USA and elsewhere.) External factors such as a general downturn in the general market for fiction played their part but internal decisions, including the choice of a relatively heterogeneous group of books to be marketed as a package, shared the responsibility for the initiative’s failure to meet its own objectives. The lesson seemed to be that success in creative endeavours cannot be bought; yet without such e≠orts, new writers might remain ‘mute inglorious Miltons’ with obvious loss to the cultural life of the nation. The imprint is currently (2006) suspended. The SAC has also actively supported literary magazines in Scotland. They provide, as much as 11:9 did, a seed bed for new writers whose work can be shaped and nurtured by experienced and sympathetic editors: They [little magazines] are snickered at and snubbed, sometimes deservedly and no one would venture to say in a precise way just what e≠ect they have – except that they keep the new talents warm until the commercial publisher with his customary air of noble resolution is ready to take his chance, except that they make the o∞cial representatives of literature a little uneasy, except that they keep a counter current moving which perhaps no one will be fully aware of until it ceases to move. (Trilling 1951: 184) In the period 1979–99, literary magazines like Cencrastus, the Edinburgh Review and Chapman were pivotal in encouraging a diverse and lively approach to the condition of Scotland and of Scottishness and Britishness. They broadened and deepened the debate about cultural and political identity in Scotland by providing a focus and distribution network for contemporary writing, fiction, poetry and polemic, that defined, reflected, rebutted and amended those identities. Other magazines such as Scottish Book Collector, later Textualities, o≠ered platforms for a diversity of writers and writing while others had a specifically regional orientation such as Northwords. All of these magazines depended on the energy and dedication of their editors; all relied on SAC funding to make their editors’ visions a reality. Conditions attached to such funding ensured that contributors were

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paid, that production values were as high as practical, and proper attention was paid to marketing, distribution and subscription matters as well as editorial and design. These magazines were, and are, non-commercial but they made, and make, strong contributions to the public good. The SAC also promotes Scottish writing overseas by making grants for translations. Translation funds are not given to Scottish publishers, but to overseas publishers who wish to publish Scottish writers. The funds are used to defray the costs of the translation that can vary according to the length of the work and the fees charged by the translator. The total given by the SAC fluctuates according to demand and to the allocation of funding in the Literature Department for that financial year but the trend is upwards as the international profile of Scottish writers increases. The total of this area of funding varies between £4,000 and £32,000, with individual publishers receiving between £1,500 and £8,000. These appear to be small sums but support from the SAC can make a di≠erence as to the overseas publisher’s decisions on whether to go ahead with the translation. The originating publisher (as well as the writer) then receives a revenue stream in the form of royalties. This is a field where perhaps more could still be done in collaboration with the British Council and other state bodies. Alistair McCleery

There remain challenges to be faced: electronic books have, at least until now, proved an expensive disappointment, but the advent of technologies like electronic paper and ink and particularly print on demand, enabling the e≠ective publishing of books in tiny runs, will transform what is published and how it is delivered. Retailing faces a major crisis with deep discounting and the loss of independent booksellers jeopardises the survival of traditional ‘range bookselling’, although internet bookselling is probably a countervailing benefit for publishers, at least as long as Amazon.com can maintain its remarkable business model. Less publisher- and book-friendly are the plans of GooglePrint and Microsoft to digitise ‘all the world’s books’: their business model and attitudes to authors’ and publishers’ rights are to say the least obscure. Nevertheless, publishing in the twenty-first century is probably as economically strong as it has ever been and books seem likely to remain commercially adaptable and powerful products in the market for the foreseeable future.

Selling to the World Alistair McCleery John Buchan wrote in Memory Hold-the-Door (1940), his autobiography, of the pre-1918 period in the history of Thomas Nelson & Sons: We were a progressive concern, and in our standardised Edinburgh factories we began the publication of cheap books in many tongues. On the eve of the war we must have been one of the largest businesses of the kind in the world, issuing cheap editions of every kind of literature not only in English, but in French, German, Magyar and Spanish, and being about to start in Russian. (Buchan: 87) A new factory, capable of producing 200,000 books a week, had been built in 1907 to undertake these cheap editions. The books were grouped into various popular libraries, such as the New Century Library that included titles by Dickens, Thackeray and Scott, ‘handy for the pocket or knapsack, and especially suitable for railway reading’ as the firm’s advertising read. The Sixpenny Classics, later just Nelson Classics, began in 1903 as a reprint series of non-copyright works and was eventually to consist of over 400 volumes; the Nelson Library, selling at 7d, o≠ered from 1907 reprints of copyright works in still familiar, at least to denizens of second-hand bookshops, red and gold cloth bindings. New titles were issued each fortnight and John Buchan, a recent addition to the firm, brought into the Classics fold works by James, Conrad and Wells. A Shilling Library provided a series of further copyright titles of general literature, while several foreign series catered for languages other than English. From 1880 onwards, that operation produced a flood of reprints – including, as Siân Reynolds details below, French-language reprints sold successfully to the French – school books, prize books and religious books; 71

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Figure 1.10 Nelson French edition of Buchan’s Prester John, Le Prêtre Jean, 1951.

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all at inexpensive prices. The Royal Readers series, followed by the Royal School series, eventually extending to seventy titles, sold in vast quantities throughout the British Empire. Among other educational works published by the firm, Highroads of History (1907), Highroads of Literature (1911) and Highroads of Geography (1911) were to remain on Nelson’s back list for more than forty years. Blackie, Collins and Oliver & Boyd provided similar illustrations of successful marketing.

Nelson’s French Collection 1910–60s It is unusual to find a British publisher producing large numbers of books in foreign languages, but the printing and publishing firm of Thomas Nelson & Sons, one of the largest firms in Edinburgh, became famous for its French Collection in the years after 1910. Nelson’s fortunes had been built largely on school textbooks, following the British Education Acts of the 1870s, but the firm also produced several series or ‘libraries’ in pocket editions, solidly and attractively printed and bound. In 1907, it started a copyright reprint series, the Sevenpenny Library, and the same year built a new factory of advanced design alongside the existing one at the Parkside Works, under Arthur’s Seat. Employing over 1,000 workers, Nelsons now embarked on machine production of books on a scale never before envisaged. If necessary it could produce 200,000 copies within a week, claiming by 1912 to be producing the cheapest books in the world. But by the same token, it needed to keep the presses and bindery working and was on the lookout for ideas for further collections. The French book market had a gap that Nelsons was able to exploit, between the luxury book trade, beyond most readers’ pockets, and the current cheap editions, which were not cased but bound in thin paper wrappers and often carelessly printed. By comparison, the existing Nelson’s hardback libraries in English looked rather luxurious. The Nelsons team which in 1910 launched an invasion of the French book trade consisted of the managing director, George Mackenzie Brown, the writer John Buchan, who had joined the firm in 1906, and the two brothers Tommy and Ian Nelson. After unsuccessfully seeking a French publisher-partner, Nelson’s used the good o∞ces of the dynamic Charles Saroléa, head of the Edinburgh University French Department, to launch their series in 1910. He recruited authors, translators and writers of introductions, and negotiated tirelessly with Paris publishers. His intellectual enthusiasm for a while coincided with the firm’s commercial plans, though Brown was soon writing to Hugh Miller that Saroléa ‘regards this Library as a great scheme for the di≠usion of French literature, but I am afraid we are taken up with the more sordid

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idea of selling as many copies of the books as we can to the French public’ (NA, 22 March 1910). The venture proceeded by e≠ectively opening a Paris branch of Nelsons, with the co-operation of up-and-coming young Bernard Grasset (founder of the later famous French publishing house). The earliest books were typeset abroad, with stereotypes being sent to Edinburgh to be printed and bound. The first copies appeared on French bookstalls in June 1910, in what was to become their famous cream binding with green and gold lettering and decoration. At 1.25 francs, these pretty, well-printed and easily handled books sold at a giveaway price, and indeed they stunned French publishers. The first titles were predominantly prose fiction, including a judicious selection of classics by such writers as Balzac and Alphonse Daudet, and translations from the Russian and English, including Anna Karenina and Ivanhoe. History and memoirs, especially relating to the Napoleonic period cashed in on the contemporary cult of Napoleon. The Collection Nelson used promotion methods new to France, including advertising posters on railway stations, a motor van for deliveries inside Paris, and even a filmshow for Parisian booksellers, showing them the wonders of the Parkside Works. Surprisingly, many complaints were received about misprints in the first copies. Accordingly, the entire operation, including typesetting, was before long located in Edinburgh: the French copy was all to be handled by Scottish compositors, deemed capable of foreign-language setting when associated with competent French-speaking proofreaders. Other problems included the early defection of Grasset – too much of an individualist to be content to sell someone else’s books – and later and more seriously of Saroléa, who left to set up a similar series (Gallia) for the English publisher J. M. Dent. Nevertheless, the collection continued and prospered. By late 1911, Nelson had reached an agreement with the major Paris publisher Calmann-Lévy to issue some titles under their joint imprint. Despite the intervention of the Great War, the collection survived to reach a total of over 300 titles by the 1920s, and 400 by 1939. It catered largely for a middlebrow readership, concentrating on classics, reprints and safe titles, and was particularly successful as the provider of cheap but robust books for use in schools, colleges and universities in Britain, while appealing to a general readership in France. Readers liked to collect shelves full of the recognisable little cream-coloured books. One successful contract led to the re-issue of the entire works of Victor Hugo in fifty-one volumes, advertised by a picture showing a special bookcase. Only partial figures for sales and profits have so far come to light, but in 1912, the French collection accounted for about one quarter of Nelsons total operating profit of £48,000. One salesman for Nelsons in France sold 67,000 books in 1913, some in English but most in French (Wacquez).

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The collection remained in existence until 1962 when Nelsons was sold to the Thomson Organisation. Before the Second World War, it had had a Paris sta≠ of thirty-five and a steadily growing list, including children’s books, dictionaries, an atlas, special editions for school prizes and so on. After the war, despite the loss of its funds by sequestration during the Occupation, the Paris branch survived, but on a much reduced basis. Some e≠ort was made to modernise the collection, but its glory days were by then behind it. It had issued similar but smaller collections in Spanish, German and Hungarian. This Scottish-based collection left a lasting imprint on cultural memory in both Britain and France. John Buchan had written to Tommy Nelson at the launch of the first French titles: ‘It is the best thing we have done and that is saying a great deal’ (JBA, 4 June 1910). Albert Camus in an autobiographical novel remembered the ‘special smell’ of the books in the local library in his Algerian childhood in the 1920s, so that ‘J. could have told a book from the Collection Nelson from the popular editions published by Fasquelle with his eyes shut’ (Camus: 228). Denis Brogan wrote in 1953 that ‘there must be many who got their first taste of French literature from that great series’, and who like him, still possessed its ‘treasured volumes . . . [bound in] white and gold’ (Letter to The Times, 14 March). Siân Reynolds

The success depended in part on the reputation of Scottish education. As long as one of the country’s other major exports was wellqualified people, whether engineers, doctors, teachers or accountants, then others overseas were provided with examples of the benefits of a Scottish education and would wish the building blocks for it in the form of text books. Where Scots went abroad, often throughout the then British Empire, to found schools, colleges and universities, or to join the sta≠ of pre-existing institutions, then they took a curriculum based on text books produced in their native land, often by their former professors. The e≠ect of the Scottish diaspora was not only to create a wider market for books produced in Scotland but, through its very existence, to constitute an overseas market for books about Scotland. In the thirty years before 1914, Scottish culture had been dominated by what came to be known as the Kailyard School, usefully glossed by Margaret Drabble as ‘a group of Scottish writers who exploited a sentimental and romantic image of small town life in Scotland, with much use of the vernacular’ (Drabble: 524). This snap definition omits perhaps the key element in any characterisation of the Kailyard phenomenon – its widespread popularity, constituting, together with its sister genre of

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romantic historical fiction, a publishing success for Scottish writing on both sides of the Atlantic. Through the e≠ect of residence in London, and through their knowing acquiescence in market forces prevailing in England and the USA, the writers of the Kailyard abandoned the portrayal of Scotland as a political entity. In its place, they substituted two concerns: to project a favourable yet non-threatening image of the Scot to English readers; and secondly, to mitigate the harsh picture of Scottish Calvinism by introducing a more moderate and more liberal note into their portrayal of Scottish life. Christopher Harvie divides Scotland into two factions: ‘the achieving society, the defensive community’ (Harvie 1977: 14). While the achievers acted as butlers to the Empire, the defenders sought to strengthen a civic and communitarian sense of Scottishness. The Kailyard was an industry: not simply a fairly homogeneous group of authors but a collection of agents, salesmen, editors and publishers. The predominant figure within that industry was William Robertson Nicoll, and the predominant firms in volume publishing were Scottish in provenance – Nelson, Collins, Blackie. Nicoll distributed patronage and to some extent determined theme and treatment. Scottish firms (although Nicoll worked for Hodder & Stoughton) directed and dominated the market. The defenders of a particular vision of Scotland provided versions of it to the achievers and their o≠spring who had settled overseas but in doing so focused solely on a bucolic, Jacobite or Burnsian Scotland that in itself became a commodity. The later period of 1918 to 1945 is characterised by stagnation and renewal in Scottish publishing. The imperial enterprise continued, looking ever outwards, while small presses were founded to reflect the revival of cultural nationalism and its literary expression, the Scottish Renaissance. Many of these small presses failed after initial success or, where persistent, lost their independence to larger, London-based, houses. A similar migration can be noted in the imprint pages of the key writers: early work published in Edinburgh, later work in London. These movements were due to the very success of Scottish culture in the marketplace. In 1934 the Twelfth International Congress of PEN, the organisation for writers, was held in Scotland. Some 400 to 500 delegates came from every country in Europe, except Russia and Turkey – ‘from the United States, Canada, Latin America, Ireland, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, China, came bands of influential authors’ (Power 1937: 175). The congress opened on 18 June in the Assembly Hall of the Church of Scotland in Edinburgh. The business of the congress was dominated by the political tensions in Europe; much concern was expressed about the

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position of writers in totalitarian regimes. H. G. Wells set the tone in his opening address: ‘When politics reaches up and assaults literature and the liberty of human thought and expression, we have to take notice of politics. If not, what would the PEN Club be? A tourist agency introducing respectable writers to useful scenery.’ Edwin Muir chaired a debate on assistance for exiled German writers during which Marinetti, the Italian Futurist poet, ‘explaining the Fascist position’, spoke for forty-five minutes on the necessity of excluding politics from PEN (The Scotsman, 20 June 1934). He o≠ered compliments to the beauty of the Highland scenery of Scotland. Scottish writers and editors, despite this relegation to ‘useful scenery’, were at the centre of international a≠airs and keenly aware of the nexus between literature and politics. Thanks to the intervention of Sir Godfrey Collins, not only publisher but also Secretary of State for Scotland, a large garden party was held at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh for the assembled writers; ‘in the bright sunshine which favoured the garden party, the grounds presented a spectacle of rich colour and animation’ (The Scotsman, 19 June). H. G. Wells, the president of the International PEN Federation, was the general chairman while the conference banquet was presided over by R. B. Cunninghame-Graham. Edinburgh Castle was floodlit for the occasion. Discretionary tours were organised to the Scottish Borders, to the Highlands, and to sites and places associated with Robert Burns. Contemporary Scottish writers strutted their stu≠ in front of this international audience. Professor H. J. C. Grierson, president of the Scottish Centre of PEN, had welcomed delegates with an a∞rmation of Scotland’s ‘spiritual and cultural independence’: one of the most interesting features in the work of some of our younger poets today is the combination of a passionate patriotism, a love for our own vernacular, with a desire to cultivate a genuine internationalism, to merge the stream of Scottish poetry and drama and prose in the larger river of European thought and feeling and aspiration. (The Scotsman, 18 June) It was an occasion that asserted both the nationalism and the internationalism of Scottish culture. It was with a keenly felt sense of pride that Scottish writing could take its place among the flags of many nations. However, the outbreak of the Second World War saw a voluntary halt to this reassertion of Scottishness. Where the International PEN conference in 1934 had shown Scottish literature and culture at an apogee, the Empire Exhibition, a sort of imperial World’s Fair, which opened in Glasgow in 1938, was to do the same for trade, industry and the wider

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Figure 1.11 Empire exhibition excursion leaflet, 1938, Thomas Nelson & Sons.

community of Scotland, where 13.5 million visitors toured the expansive site, viewing the wide range of pavilions and exhibits. Neil Gunn wrote ‘Scots Welcome’ in the special exhibition issue of the Scottish Field. Yet the omens were there for those who would read them: a major Air Raid Precaution conference was held; that exhibition issue of the Scottish Field featured a review of Adolf Hitler at home; the newsreels shown at the exhibition reported on the Munich Crisis; and the Peace Pavilion, designed by Ramsay MacDonald’s son Alister, stood at the far, most remote end of the site. When the war broke out, nationalism became a pejorative term and Scottish identity was subsumed within the British bulldog standing against the Nazis. Much of the Empire Exhibition site was demolished and the materials recycled as a contribution to the war e≠ort. A further thirty years were to pass before another renaissance, in Scottish culture and Scottish magazine publishing, was to occur. Yet in the period after the Second World War, as Empire passed into Commonwealth, with its individual members finding autonomy in matters of education and culture as well as sovereignty, the

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Figure 1.12 Jacket cover images from Alexander McCall Smith’s The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series.

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non-cultural, educational markets disappeared as well. In the postwar period only a small industry was needed to serve the immediate cultural market of Scotland. This situation persisted generally until the end of the twentieth century when new outward-looking opportunities became available through technological innovation for a country with a new sense of control over itself – and its cultural infrastructure.

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Alexander McCall Smith had been a relatively prolific author of academic and children’s books before the publication of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Polygon in Edinburgh in 1998. Polygon, originating in the Edinburgh University Students’ Publication Board (EUSPB), was at that point under the wing of Edinburgh University Press (EUP), balancing the latter’s academic and text book list by publishing unconventional nonfiction titles and new works of fiction. Marion Sinclair, its managing editor, had a proven track record in discovering fresh writing talent and spotted the potential of the novel when it was o≠ered to her by McCall Smith, then a senior academic in the Faculty of Law with a specialist interest in medical ethics. Indeed, the origins of the novel lay not only in McCall Smith’s general a≠ection for sub-Saharan Africa (he had been born in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe), but specifically in a secondment from Edinburgh University to teach in Swaziland in 1980. His visit during that secondment to some friends in Botswana provided the inspiration for the novel, particularly with the sight of a large woman in a red dress who chased and killed a chicken. However, it was only when on holiday in France in 1997 that he turned that inspiration into the novel. The Polygon imprint did not have a large budget for advances or for promotion and marketing. Indeed, its peripherality to the core business of EUP was highlighted when the latter sold it in 2002, including the by then successful McCall Smith titles, to another small and dynamic independent publisher based in Edinburgh, Birlinn, founded by Hugh Andrew in 1992. The novel attracted positive reviews but its sales were slow and steady as its reputation spread by word of mouth. The initial indi≠erence of the literary establishment was partly due to the book’s themes and setting, none of which seemed in tune with the urban realism of James Kelman in the West or Irvine Welsh in the East. Yet it sold on the basis of its positive humane nature, at odds with fashion both generally in terms of its lack of misery and angst and specifically in terms of its portrayal of an Africa distant from the images perpetuated by famine relief appeals. McCall Smith later stated to an interviewer:

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I think my books are certainly a bit di≠erent from the very realistic fiction that comes from Edinburgh. But I would say that a city’s literary nature needn’t be carved in stone. One doesn’t need to accept that there is just one sort of literature or one formula for the Scottish novel. I think that one can challenge that idea and say, here is something di≠erent, without being disparaging in any sense about other people’s e≠orts. One can do something di≠erent. (McCall Smith) The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency eventually (1999) received two Booker Judges’ Special Recommendations and was voted one of the International Books of the Year and the Millennium by The Times Literary Supplement. Polygon sold copies initially into the USA but as the novel took o≠ there, Random House, through their Anchor Books paperback imprint, bought the American rights and reissued it in 2002. The novel was a choice of the Today Show Book Club and its sales increased dramatically in the USA as it cascaded from a national selection to that of countless local book groups that normally followed the lead of Oprah or, in her absence, the Today Show. By 2003 sales of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency in the USA had reached 1.5 million while UK sales stood at 1 million. The UK paperback editions were now undertaken by Abacus, an imprint of the Little, Brown Book Group, itself, like Chambers Harrap in Edinburgh, a member of the Hachette Livre Group of Companies. Translation rights had been sold for twenty-six languages worldwide and what had turned into a series of books involving Mma Ramotswe and her detective agency was due to reach number eight with the publication of The Good Husband of Zebra Drive by Polygon (Birlinn) in March 2007. The key here is that, unlike other authors nurtured by small independent Scottish publishers who, after achieving success, moved to a larger transnational company, Alexander McCall Smith has remained with Polygon as the primary hardback publisher of this series (and his other, more recent adult fiction). By licensing the rights in these novels to other publishers who can do more, whether in di≠erent territories or in di≠erent formats (chiefly paperback), McCall Smith achieves as much or more than he would have done if he had left Polygon altogether. For the latter, this arrangement represents an acknowledgement that selling to the world today involves not the large-scale export of physical books, as it did previously for Nelsons and their contemporaries, but the sale of intellectual property rights for the physical books to be reproduced elsewhere (and in even more languages than Nelsons managed). Alistair McCleery

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By the closing date of this volume (2000), the world wide web had become an established resource for retail selling and purchasing. It had also become a powerful tool for promoting goods of all sorts. This situation was partly due to the success of Amazon, launched as an online bookshop in 1995 with a user-friendly interface and the use of ‘intelligent agents’ to replace the bookshop assistant, and with a range of ‘stock’ far outstripping any constrained by a physical building. Its founder, Je≠ Bezos, was named Time magazine’s ‘Man of the Year’ in 1999 for the manner in which he had transformed online shopping. Larger publishers, such as Penguin, began at this time to build up websites that not only gave bibliographical details of their titles but that provided complementary material of all kinds ranging from author interviews to reading guides for book groups. Smaller publishers tried to follow suit but, given their restricted resources and tight margins, tended to produce static web pages that aged quickly and were not revised or updated. Given that most independent publishers in Scotland were small, it became clear that none of them was able individually to exploit adequately the world wide web as either selling or promotional tool. The BooksfromScotland.com website was established by the Scottish Publishers Association, as a result of a study of the strategic future of publishing in Scotland commissioned by the Scottish Arts Council, to undertake these two roles as a co-operative venture. The nature of the web means that its outreach is global (although the books still have to be dispatched) and that the information available grows in an exponential manner as details of further authors and titles, interviews and articles are added. Scotland is once more informing and selling to the world.

The Development of the Bookshop Simon Ward The period between 1880 and the end of the nineteenth century was one that witnessed the bookshop occupy a much more intermediary position between publisher and the public. Until mid-century the activities of publishing and bookselling were largely carried out by the same companies, but a progressive division of labour resulted in the more autonomous trade of bookselling. This was shown in the establishment of the Associated Booksellers in 1895 (later the Booksellers Association of Great Britain and Ireland) and further marked by publishers separating the more commercial branches of the industry and founding the Publishers Association the following year. Despite increased autonomy, many bookshops were still the retail counterparts of publishing concerns and many booksellers themselves undertook publication of their own books. David Bryce & Son, for example, founded in 1832 in Glasgow, published several ‘Cabinet Editions of the Poets’ and their ‘Golden Thought Series’ comprised a number of booklets that sold in excess of half a million copies (The Publishers’ Circular 1891, 12 Sept.: 279–80). Also in Glasgow, John Smith & Son published several books of both local and national interest and continued publishing until the First World War (John Smith & Son Ltd: 29). (They could also boast of having the oldest continuous heritage of any bookselling firm in the United Kingdom (Norrie: 78)). William Brown of Princes Street in Edinburgh undertook the reprinting of ‘small editions of general rarities in Scottish bibliography’ as well as some ‘new books’ (The Publishers’ Circular 1891, 5 Sept.: 255). The geographical distribution of bookshops mirrored the population spread and was mainly concentrated in cities with relatively fewer in the provinces (PSI: 23). Since at least 1863 Edinburgh had 83

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contained a disproportionately higher number of bookshops per head of population than anywhere else in the United Kingdom, with more than 130 firms (Edinburgh Evening News, 28 May 1963: 4). In 1880 the Post O∞ce Directories listed 138 booksellers and stationers in Edinburgh, while there were fifty-two in Aberdeen, and eighty-eight in Dundee. By 1900 these had increased to 142 in Edinburgh, 108 in Aberdeen and 123 in Dundee. Only Glasgow had a decline in the twenty-year period, from 149 to 119. A direct comparison between the figures is not straightforward as the precise criteria for ‘bookshop’ is not clear. They are all listed in the directories under the trade ‘booksellers and stationers’. Meanwhile those for Aberdeen also include ‘wholesalers’, and Edinburgh figures (for both sets of years) include those that are also publishers, bookbinders; and that keep circulating libraries. Although relatively numerous, the survival of bookshops within metropolitan areas depended on a number of factors. The stocking of newly published popular books had for some time been fairly unprofitable (see below) and to increase their revenue most shops would di≠erentiate themselves by catering for di≠erent customers, often depending on their location within the city. Most town and provincial bookshops stocked stationery goods as a means of increasing profit, and the books they did stock usually were cheap reprints of out-ofcopyright titles (Stott: 932–3). Larger shops focusing on academic titles and depending on a student trade would be found in close proximity to universities, such as Bissets in Aberdeen, John Smith & Son in Glasgow, and James Thin in Edinburgh. Elsewhere in Edinburgh, the shops that were congregated around the Old Town tended either to specialise in a particular subject area, such as law (Bell & Bradfute, Bank Street), divinity (R. W. Hunter, George IV Bridge), or medicine (Donald Ferrier Ltd, Potterrow), or, in addition to new publications, included a large second-hand or antiquarian department (James Thin, South Bridge; John Grant, George IV Bridge) (Publishers’ Circular 1891: 1307, 1308, 1311, 1314, 1315, 1317). The owners would be very familiar with their respective areas of expertise, would have a good knowledge of custom and trade (picked up while ‘apprenticed’ to a senior bookseller) and would buy their specialist titles from book fairs and auctions. Despite the much slower turnover of stock, the bookseller could still realise a fair profit for they set their own prices in the confidence that the titles would not be found in other bookshops. To advertise their stock each would have to compile and issue regularly a catalogue of titles that they would then send to interested and potential customers around the country and the world. With low overheads

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(many shops were poorly lit and often expense was spared on fixtures and fittings) and a≠ordable rent they could subsist on the small passing trade and by exporting books to customers, often in Canada, South Africa and Australia. Other larger and more commercial bookshops on the high street acquired further custom by opening their own lending libraries as adjuncts to their retail business. Robert Grant & Son and Elliot (both on Princes Street) had libraries, while the circulating library at Douglas & Foulis on Edinburgh’s Castle Street was one of the largest outside London. It also supported Mudie’s Circulating Library, based in London and the best known of its kind, in the campaign to lower prices paid by libraries for books to 4s, helping inadvertently to bring about Mudie’s collapse (Griest: 173). However, the Douglas & Foulis library continued until 1976. Railway stalls also sold books, periodicals and ephemeral literature, such as ‘yellowbacks’ and tourist guides. With the rise in newspaper production and the expanded railway distribution network the number of stalls correspondingly increased across Scotland. In 1857 book wholesaler John Menzies bought the leases of its first railway bookstalls in Bridge of Allan, Perth and Stirling, initiating a much larger move into news and book retailing. Such bookstalls quickly assumed a greater importance and captured the travelling market often missed by the city shops and were soon ‘leading the public taste in reading habits and consumer goods’. By 1946, when John Menzies took over the business of Robert Graham, capturing the Glasgow and south-west lines, it had a monopoly on railway bookstalls in Scotland and became ‘the largest concern of its kind’ (Gardiner 1983: 33, 44). Competition between booksellers in the nineteenth century had always been fierce. Despite several attempts to prevent the underselling of new and popular books (selling them at less than their published price) it continued and threatened the demise of many bookshops (Stott: 932–3). Prior to the formation of the Associated Booksellers of GB and Ireland, booksellers in Scottish cities had formed their own societies in the hope of protecting their profit margins (see Beavan 1981). Many bookshops could not a≠ord to sell new books at a discount to the public of more than 3d in the shilling (25 per cent). This resulted in booksellers calling for better and standardised terms of sale for all. A motion put forward by the publisher Frederick Macmillan advocated that all shops receive the same discount on the books they bought from publishers and that any variance in selling (‘net’) price should be disallowed. This retail price maintenance, although voluntary, was made law and came into e≠ect on 1 January 1900 as the NBA.

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With the NBA in place economic conditions were more or less favourable for booksellers over the opening decades of the twentieth century. Book clubs appeared in the 1930s and o≠ered limited competition to bookshops. Retail conditions on the high street, however, changed with the result that overheads increased and many bookshops couldn’t a≠ord their rent and rates. Robert Grant & Son was forced to move away from Princes Street in Edinburgh in 1951 having been there for 147 years, blaming ‘high rates and high taxation’ (Edinburgh Evening News, 12 April 1951: 2). With the exception of the time of paper shortages surrounding the two world wars, the number of new titles published each year rose. In 1900 there were 7,149 new books published (including new editions), in 1930 this rose to 15,494 and by 1970 it had reached 33,489 (Norrie: 220). Latterly this is explained by the expansion of paperback production in the 1960s; and many bookshops increased shop space to accommodate the greater number of titles they were having to stock. Penguin, although dominating the paperback market, fitted ‘Penguin Sections’ at their own expense within several shops as a response to cheaper book prices and the growth of the book-buying public (Scotsman, 23 April 1968: 9). In the 1930s John Menzies increased the number of bookshops and sought to prevent the ‘extinction’ of Scottish bookselling by buying premises in Inverness and Aberdeen, its first major expansion since it was established in Edinburgh in 1833 (John Menzies & Co Ltd: 58). With the necessary capital yielded from its bookstall and wholesaling successes, it opened a further twenty-one bookshops between 1949 and 1958. Giving a reason for its growth by acquisition the company explained that: whenever a bookshop appeared on the market and failed to find a purchaser it has become the policy of the Company to acquire the business and carry it on in the best traditions of bookselling [as] there are too few good bookshops in the country for even one to pass out of existence. (John Menzies & Co Ltd: 35–6) In addition to books, it also sold newsagent items, toys and music. By the 1950s bookshop-owners realised that they had to shake o≠ the musty and intimidating image that most premises had and modernise with other retailers in the post-war boom. Many bookshops refurbished their interiors, kept in touch with customer demand and installed new departments. In the 1960s a few were innovative enough to branch into the recorded music market by either closing their second-hand department and opening a record section (Edinburgh

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Evening News, 19 Aug. 1963: 3), or equipping their premises with ‘sound-insulated booths’ and co≠ee-shops (Edinburgh Evening News and Dispatch, 28 June 1965: 4). Although many shops increased their range of stock, the arrival of paperbacks heralded better terms of supply from many publishers. Rather than all stock being bought from publishers on a ‘firm sale’ basis, stock was increasingly supplied on ‘sale or return’. Bookshops therefore could devote more space to new publications, return dead and unprofitable books to publishers for credit, and help reduce the amount of capital tied up in depreciating stock. Ine∞ciencies within the book trade caused booksellers problems which in turn a≠ected their services. Distribution had been in ‘disarray’ since 1950 as publishers moved their premises to more remote parts of the UK (see Thin 1976 and Chambers 1971). The time between ordering and receiving stock and customer orders was anywhere between one and six weeks. The Booksellers Charter Group, set up in the 1960s, alleviated some of the problems resulting from lack of adequate communication between the Booksellers and Publishers Associations. It helped professionalise bookselling by establishing training courses for members, standardising order forms and setting minimal standards of service for stock and bibliographical facilities (Thin 1976: 107). Computers were also becoming more commonplace as a means of improving stock control, since many city bookshops stocked anywhere between 20,000 and 80,000 titles (Scotsman, 2 Dec. 1966: 6). The Scottish book trade received welcome support with the formation of the Scottish Publishers Association in 1973, which worked together with many booksellers in the promotion and sale of Scottish books to a wider market, under the joint trade organisation of the Scottish Book Marketing Group throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Between 1980 and 2000 the book trade changed considerably and the arrival of large, multi-branch bookselling chains e≠ected a period of intense competition between bookshops as never before experienced. Both Waterstones and Dillons ‘changed the face of UK bookselling’ along several lines, most notably in the sizes of stores they were opening, the extent and volume of their stock (Bookselling 2000: 16), and their shop layout which appealed to greater numbers of customers. As they are backed with much more capital than smaller independents and family-owned firms they can a≠ord the rents on city-centre sites. During the tough retail climate of the 1980s, many independents went out of business and were taken over by the larger chains. In 1985 Waterstones opened its first branch outside London in Edinburgh’s George Street, which became the group’s most

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Figure 1.13 John Menzies, 1979.

profitable shop per square foot in 1989 (see Goring). Waterstones also opened a large branch (22,000 square feet) on Princes Street that stocked 65,000 titles. In 1992 there were branches of Dillons, Waterstones and Hatchards rivalling John Smith & Son in Glasgow’s city centre. By the mid-1990s John Menzies plc (as it had become) had expanded to seventy railway bookstalls, around 200 retail bookshops (ninety-two in Scotland) and eighty-seven regional o∞ces, warehouses and wholesale distribution centres. James Thin Ltd had started expansion in the 1970s throughout Scotland and, after buying nineteen shops of the English chain Volume One in 1994, increased their number of shops to thirty-five and became the fifth-largest book retailer in the UK (James Thin Ltd 1998: 33).

John Menzies In 1833 John Menzies opened a bookshop on Princes Street in Edinburgh. As the years progressed, Menzies expanded into wholesale bookselling, taking on Scottish railway bookstall concessions in 1857 and maintaining a number of retail shops supplying not only books but also stationery, news and magazines. When the founder John Menzies died in 1879, his sons

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John R. and Charles took over as directors. Over the next sixty years, under their management the firm focused firmly on the wholesaling business, opening branch warehouses in Dundee, Aberdeen, Carlisle and elsewhere. The firm became a limited company in 1906, opened new branches in Perth, Dunfermline and Greenock, and by 1934 had thirteen wholesale branches across Scotland, as well as countless railway bookstalls, a news distribution department, stationery and book distribution divisions. It also ran a profitable transport unit, which developed after its old horse-drawn van fleet gave way to motor-cars and diesel powered vans in the 1920s. Menzies had few competitors in Scotland, and through careful negotiation maintained a monopoly on Scottish railway bookstall provisions well into the 1960s, when swingeing cuts to railway lines and services instigated by Dr Richard Beeching led to the closure of a substantial portion of Menzies’ railway bookstall network. In 1965 it could count ninety wholesale warehouses, 150 retail shops, and 340 railway bookstall outlets in its business holdings; by the early 1970s the railway stall concessions had dwindled to fifty-four, while its other divisions had gained strength. As partial replacement for these losses, Menzies began moving into airport concession work, and from 1959 onwards also engaged in an aggressive expansion of its business beyond Scottish borders. Initial takeovers of London-based wholesaling and export firms Wyman & Sons in 1959, Leeds-based Charles Pickles and Belfast-based Charles Porter & Co. in 1961, were followed by purchases of other British wholesale books and newspaper distributors. A restructuring in 1969 into six divisions comprising wholesaling, retail, commercial, financial, personnel and property attested to the range of areas the firm had developed interests in by then. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s the firm continued to expand and take over competitors in the market, following a global pattern of ‘synergistic’ conglomeration and assimilation activity that was prevalent amongst large (mainly US) companies of the period. They purchased retail news and stationery firm Joes Yarrell & Co. in 1970, wholesale record and tape distributors Terry Blood (Records) Ltd in 1980, and wholesale children’s books, toys and games suppliers Children’s Books in 1981. They also rebranded themselves as John Menzies plc in 1982. Transport would become a dominant preoccupation for Menzies plc in the coming decades, as they capitalised on their e∞cient transport service work, initially used to support the firm’s own book and newspaper distribution needs, and sought new ways of utilising these resources. From 1989 onwards the firm focused on expanding their transport services division, buying up international courier services in the US, Australia, Sweden and elsewhere, and successfully bidding for passenger and baggage transfer services contracts at Heathrow and other major UK airports. By 1997 the firm’s move away from its original founding

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purpose (bookselling and retailing) was o∞cially conceded when it was retitled a distributor as opposed to retailer on the UK stock exchange actuaries index. More radical changes came in 1998, when Menzies sold its book retail chain to what had once been its most formidable English competitor, W. H. Smith, and in 2000, when it sold o≠ its book, video and music wholesaling businesses. The result demonstrated a surprising reversal of a general trend in Scottish book, printing and related industries in the twentieth century, namely, a Scottish-based firm that did not succumb to takeover and restructuring by foreign interests, but rather survived by reshaping itself into a multinational conglomerate specialising in an ancillary area of its original activities – transport and distribution services. David Finkelstein

Once the NBA had collapsed in October 1995 booksellers were free to sell books at any price they wanted. The economies of scale on which bookselling now largely depended favoured the chains as not only could they spread the costs of their operations over a larger number of shops, but the sizes of their orders from publishers allowed them a bigger discount which they could pass on to the customer. Smaller and independent shops have su≠ered from the ensuing price competition as well as from the inability to stock such a wide range of books. The demise of the NBA has also encouraged non-traditional book retailers, principally supermarkets, to enter the book market and sell fast-moving mass-market titles often at a price that is lower than booksellers can obtain from their own wholesaler. The full e≠ect of the abolition of the NBA has yet to be seen, but the future does not bode well for independent bookshops. Testimony to this is the decline in membership of the Booksellers Association by 192 over six years (from 3,333 in October 1995 to 3,141 in August 2001) (Dearnley: 23). Scottish bookselling has su≠ered in times of ruthless competition. The end of the twentieth century saw a number of Scottish firms closing on the high street. The John Menzies retail outlets were bought by and rebranded as W. H. Smith in January 1998. John Smith & Son finally ended 251 years as an independent bookselling firm when it was bought by library supplier Coutts Information Services in 2001, although the name continues as a brand of campus shops. James Thin went into voluntary administration in January 2002 and sold the academic side of the business to Blackwell and the general bookshops to Ottakars. The last remaining Scottish-owned chain of bookshops was that of David Flatman Ltd. It was set up in 1977 and came to include the remaining bookshops Bargain Books and Bookworld, although it

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similarly went into administration in early 2007. The premises around Scotland that were not closed were sold to a rival discount bookseller The chains and supermarkets themselves are not free from competition. The year 2000 marked the arrival of internet bookselling and the early years of the twenty-first century will see how the more traditional bookshop adapts itself to survive in an online retail environment.

Section 2

PRODUCTION, FORM AND IMAGE Overview

he earlier nineteenth century, covered in the previous volume in this series, saw the triumph of the machine across all areas of book production with the exception of typesetting, and even there composing by hand had reached unprecedented speeds and e∞ciencies. Skilled compositors could set about 2,000 letters an hour. In papermaking, the introduction of the Fourdrinier machine, producing paper through a continuous process, increased output by a factor of ten, from a maximum of 100 pounds each day to 1,000 pounds plus, becoming more and more e∞cient with more complex and powerful machinery, much of which was developed by the two Bertrams’ factories in Edinburgh and exported worldwide. The economic e≠ect of this was to reduce the cost of paper by half over the period from the beginning of the nineteenth century until 1880. The insatiable demand of the papermills for raw material – major mills consumed some 5,000 tons of rags every year – led to a search for new sources of cellulose. Wood pulp and, more characteristic of the Scottish mills, esparto grass, imported from southern Spain and North Africa, became standard. The rolls or webs of paper fed the large rotary printing machines that had replaced hand presses for volume production. The period prior to 1880 also saw the gradual replacement of letterpress printing by lithography. Although the latter process, using polished stones, had been discovered by Senefelder at the end of the eighteenth century, it remained too expensive for other than individual prints or illustrations in high-priced books. Its ability to reproduce a wide variation of tones and textures suited it to the reproduction of photographs from mid-nineteenth century onwards. This roughly coincided with the development of treated metal plates in the place of stones making the process both cheaper and more flexible.

T

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Wood engraving was also largely superseded as the primary process for the creation of images. Separate litho plates could be used for di≠erent colours in order to create fresh and vibrant full-colour images, often facsimiles of popular works of art. Lithography itself underwent further evolution in the twentieth century with the introduction of o≠set. In o≠set lithography the image is drawn directly onto a plate by the artist, and is then transferred from the plate onto a cylinder, which in turn transfers the image to the paper. This avoids the necessity of the artist drawing the original in reverse. The o≠set lithographic technique was also increasingly applied to the reproduction of text. Technological developments such as these were to contribute to an increasing concentration of printing houses in Scotland from mid-nineteenth century onwards. This contrasted with the relatively decentralised spread throughout the previous fifty years. Scott’s The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, for example, had been produced by his former schoolmate James Ballantyne in Kelso until he moved his enterprise to Edinburgh. Often local printers produced local newspapers and formed part of a self-su∞cient small and market town print economy, providing the sort of services to local merchants and farmers that small printshops, driven by advances in photocopying and desktop publishing, began to o≠er again in the 1990s. However, companies like Thomas Nelson & Sons, publisher as well as printer, invested heavily in plant and machinery to support ambitious programmes of reprint publication. The company had built a new printing house in 1845 at Hope Park in Edinburgh, where the complete book manufacturing process was eventually carried out under one roof, with a pay-roll of over 400 employees, It began to initiate publication of stories of adventure and travel for young people, ‘moral books’, as well as educational titles generally. The former were to be especially suited to donation as Sunday school and church, or indeed weekday school, prizes to children, that is, reward books: their contents were elevating and wholesome; the books were attractively presented in accordance with the brothers’ high standards; their price did not strain the purses of church committees or school boards. The work of R. M. Ballantyne, whose The Young FurTraders, published in 1856, was written at the suggestion of William Nelson out of Ballantyne’s own experiences with the Hudson Bay Company the first of seven major titles including Coral Island (1858) published by Nelson’s before Ballantyne decamped to another house in protest over terms, fitted well into the category of ‘moral books’. Harriet Beecher Stowe, an outstanding example of the moral, humane Nelson’s author, was also among the more prominent writers, while artists such

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as Landseer and David Scott were numbered among the illustrators. A similar story could be told of Oliver & Boyd or Constable. This section covers the form of the material book, its production and design, from 1880 to 2000 and builds on this picture of its state at the beginning of the period. Duncan Glen considers the material book from a wide perspective in a personal essay that draws on his own experience as designer, editor, publisher and teacher. Three shorter case studies expand on this introduction while complementing the brief account above: the history of the Scottish papermills is traced from the boom period at the end of the nineteenth century to their decline and virtual disappearance at the close of the twentieth; the fate of local printing from the north-east to the Borders is recounted; and Thomas Nelson & Sons is used as an example of the narrative of most of the dominant printing (and publishing) houses in Scotland through the twentieth century. Duncan Glen’s essay on typography in Scotland provides a lucid account of its development to the point where Times New Roman using Adobe software on an Apple Macintosh seemed ubiquitous. He notes the use of women typesetters that Siân Reynolds takes up in more detail in her case study. Rosemary Addison supplements her survey of graphic design and illustration traditions in Scotland with case studies of Agnes Miller Parker and Joan Hassall. Tom Normand provides an account of the development and role of photography that is complemented by a short description of new techniques of reproduction. Ken Cockburn concludes the section with a study of the artist’s books of Ian Hamilton Finlay. This is fitting: one of the less desirable inheritances from nineteenth-century mechanisation and growth was too many books that were badly designed, using poor type, and badly printed on cheap, perishable paper. The constant renewal of the material book by artists from Morris, the followers of Patrick Geddes, to Hamilton Finlay also reinvigorates, and establishes a quality benchmark for books intended for a more general readership.

The Material Book Duncan Glen Reference to two editions of The Concise Oxford Dictionary gives two definitions of the word ‘book’: the definition in the 1999 edition is: ‘a written or printed work consisting of pages bound or sewn together along one side and bound in covers’. An earlier edition describes a book as a ‘portable written or printed treatise filling a number of sheets fastened together . . .’. Many terminologies change, and today we regard such a use of the word ‘treatise’ as misleading; a treatise may be a ‘book’ but, as the 1999 Concise Oxford informs, we now generally limit its use to defining a ‘written work dealing formally and systematically with a subject’. Some very large books need a porter with a trolley to make them easily portable, but the Concise Oxford is correct in that this is one of the prime assets of a printed work. Printing is a means of multiplication, and essential to the influence exerted by the printed word in book form is that copies can be physically passed from reader to reader. Neither of the Oxford definitions acknowledges that not all books comprise sheets ‘bound or sewn together’; we term The Abbot, ‘by the author of “Waverley” ’, a ‘book’ but it was first published in three separate ‘volumes’. Canongate has published The Scottish Novels by Robert Louis Stevenson as physically one book. In Britain a literary work produced with paper wrappers and wire stitched, using a saddleback stitcher, is often termed a pamphlet, but the American term for such a publication is chapbook and that seems more accurate as such productions are unquestionably books, as, equally clearly, advertising brochures produced by similar means are not. Libraries distinguish journals, magazines, periodicals or works issued in serial form from books; we have International Standard Book Numbers (ISBN) and International Standard Serial Numbers (ISSN). This division is not a matter of physical appearance; some 95

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magazines or journals are first issued case-bound and look like what we commonly term books; recent issues of the journal Studies in Scottish Literature (edited by G. Ross Roy and published by the Department of English, University of South Carolina) are good examples. It was 350 years after Gutenberg first published in 1456 before the basics of printing books underwent what can be accurately described as a radical change. This lack of innovation was partly due to restrictive practices that attempted to bar all those who were not professional printers, but when change did come it came dramatically quickly. Far from undermining the printers, new production processes and other nineteenth-century developments improved their economic standing, and the rapidly increasing book-buying public was o≠ered books at reduced prices, if not of better physical quality. Printing was not markedly speeded up until the third Earl Stanhope (1753–1816) developed an iron press and Friedrich König a steam press; König’s press was used to print books in 1826 by the Leipzig publisher F. A. Brockhaus. Until the early decades of the nineteenth century most books were hand bound. From about 1820 leather was gradually being replaced by cloth and from 1830 hand binding was being superseded by machine work. To be technically precise, the machine-bound book is ‘cased’ and not ‘bound’. In the twentieth century woven cloth mostly gave way to synthetic non-woven materials that lowered production costs. Paper has been crucial to printing since Gutenberg as, unlike vellum, it is readily available in large quantities and so allows mass production, which is what distinguishes printing. Until a papermaking machine was invented in the late 1790s paper was made slowly by hand. The mechanical manufacture of paper increased output tenfold and the price of most paper fell, thereby reducing the cost of making a book. By 1850 paper made from wood-pulp was widely used, with its manufacture becoming a major industry in Canada, Finland and Sweden. The production of cheap books selling at 6d or 1s had become profitable. The long-term e≠ect of this use of wood-pulp in the durability of the book can be seen in that it seems now to be accepted that the paper of many twentieth-century books will turn yellow and friable surprisingly quickly, and also that all too often copies of the mass-produced book that has unsewn or adhesive binding, somewhat misnamed as ‘perfect bound’, will turn into a mess of loose leaves. The mechanical manufacture of non-rag paper was improved with the use of esparto grass and many books are now printed on good paper even if it still is not acid free.

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Scottish papermills

Figure 2.1 Cutting House, Kinleith Mill, c. 1950s.

As papermills in Scotland grew, as a consequence of the related factors of mechanisation and the greatly increased demand for paper from the second half of the nineteenth century onwards, they began to invest money to develop and improve the quality of their paper products. T. & A. Constable, the Edinburgh printers, approached Kinleith Mill on the Water of Leith to produce a bulk lightweight paper for book manufacture. This led to the birth of a featherweight paper that became the staple of Kinleith’s business. The books produced using it were light and easy to handle. Galloway of Balerno also introduced technical innovations to aid production, to increase the range of products and to produce high quality coated paper. In 1937 Galloway became the first British mill to operate the American Champion process. This technique made coated paper by continuous process on the machine and Galart, as it was called, became a major part of production specifically geared to the needs of magazines like Vogue. However, this period of growth and diversification was halted by the Second World War. Its impact lasted not only from 1939 to 1945 but led to long-term and structural decline within the Scottish papermaking industry. Paper, regarded as an essential part of the war e≠ort, fell under the jurisdiction of ‘Paper Control’. This commission decided what could be

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Figure 2.2 Apprentice sorting paper sheets, c. 1950s.

produced, where paper was to be allocated, and at what level the market price was set. It also controlled the raw materials to be made available to mills; from 1939 all wood pulp and esparto grass was distributed through the paper controller. Restrictions on the industry stayed in place until 1956 when all government controls on imports of raw materials and paper were removed.

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When traditional raw materials became scarce, manufacturers began to experiment with alternative sources for production. Paper was made out of many things including potatoes, tomato plants, reeds, rope ends and sawmill waste. Straw was commonly used but this was also rationed. Wartime restrictions often caused mills to shut down temporarily. Labour to run the machines was also a problem, as many men and women were called up to do war work. By 1942 64 per cent of men who worked at the Galloway Mill were in service and it had to close frequently. Often sections of mills were taken over for use by government ministries. Kinleith Mill, for example, was used as storage for rationed tea and sugar. Papermaking equipment manufacturers such as James Bertram & Sons and Bertrams of Sciennes were commandeered by the Ministry of War and used for armament manufacture. Only essential papermaking machine maintenance could be undertaken during the war while new machines and parts were di∞cult to acquire. In the post-war period, the papermaking industry was deeply a≠ected by the state of the domestic economy and it was often prone to booms and slumps in fortune. Until 1960, however, the industry was protected by government tari≠s imposed on paper imports into the UK. This was to change with the implementation of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) Treaty, which reduced the annual duties imposed on imports from countries such as Norway, Sweden, Finland and Austria. By 1966 all imports from treaty countries were duty free. This was to have a major and lasting e≠ect on British mill costs and production. In the absence of protective tari≠s, UK mills faced the prospect of matching Scandinavian import prices without the natural advantages these countries enjoyed such as plentiful raw materials and integrated mills. The limited opportunities for further expansion of Scottish mills, often restricted by their physical location such as at Guardbridge on the River Eden, a lack of investment in new machinery, and reduced funding for research and development: all these factors had undermined the industry even before EFTA accelerated its decline. The cumulative pressures proved too great for many of the mill owners and the late 1960s and early 1970s saw a drastic reduction both in the number of papermills at work in Scotland and in the number that were still independently owned. In 1966 the Inveresk group announced that Kinleith Mill was to close. This heralded the demise of the papermaking industry on the Water of Leith and ended the production of paper on a site that had been in operation since 1792. In 1971 Galloway followed suit and announced the closure of Balerno Bank Mill. With the subsequent shutdown of Woodhall Mill, and finally the closure of Inglis Mill in 1989, the papermaking industry that had been active around Edinburgh for nearly 400 years disappeared. Mills in

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Figure 2.3 Kinleith Mill buildings, c. 1950s. Fife and Aberdeenshire followed suit or were consolidated within a smaller number of groups, of which Inveresk was the dominant one. These closures had a profound e≠ect on villages that relied on papermaking as not only a source of employment but also as a focus for their community. Alistair McCleery

In selecting a paper for a book its texture, colour and substance, including its ‘look through’ and bulk, are considered. The physical appearance of books has been changed by technological changes in typefounding, illustration techniques and printing machines which resulted in new styles of papers being manufactured. ‘Old face’ types, including Caslon which dates from 1720, were printed on open-textured papers that absorbed and spread the ink, and finer typefaces such as that used by John Baskerville (1707–75) needed smoother papers, as even more so did the ‘modern’ typefaces, with markedly contrasting thick and thin strokes, used from the 1780s by the Didot family in Paris, and Giambattista Bodoni (1740–1813) in Parma whose papers were not only smoother than the earlier ‘antiques’ but exceptionally white. These famous printers made ‘modern’ typefaces popular, but often such types were not suited to mass-produced books aimed at the lower end of the bookselling market. During the nineteenth century and into the first decades of the twentieth, most commercial book printers in

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Figure 2.4 Creating the image on the stone.

Britain produced books without proper attention to the relationship between paper and inked typeface. Over-many of these pages were set in weak spidery ‘modern’ typefaces that were badly spaced and underinked to give dull grey pages that, aesthetics apart, impaired readability. In the 1920s and 1930s there was a revival of good letterpress book printing, with several Scottish printers producing excellent work to designs supplied by publishers, but today, with good lithographic printing dominant, books printed by letterpress on antique paper are rarities produced by backward-looking enthusiastic owners of small presses. The invention of printing from the surface of a prepared stone, to be named lithography, is credited to Alois Senefelder, in the late 1790s.

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Figure 2.5 Lithographic reproduction of images.

Senefelder’s early work was done in monochrome on Bavarian limestone, from which beginning colour lithography was developed by 1810. This autolithography proved to be excellent for reproducing the delicacy of a wash drawing, the strength of charcoal and pure areas of colour. The discovery of photography in the late 1830s led in time to photolithography, with a method of making metal photolithographic plates perfected by 1910. From that date anything that could be photographed could be reproduced by lithography. Colour photolithography was a rarity until the early 1960s when it was being increasingly used in books to achieve the soft rich e≠ect that full-colour letterpress printing lacked. The discovery of photography also led to the development, for commercial letterpress printing, of the half-tone process for reproducing photographs. This encouraged the use of glossy ‘art’ paper to enable a fine screen to be used for the half-tones and resulted in books with many illustrations being entirely printed on art paper which is not the most pleasing of papers; some designers preferred a matt art paper but this could reduce the sparkle of the photographs. For books with only a

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Figure 2.6 Images – plate making.

few photographs, two di≠erent papers were used and that created distinct sections within a book. The illustrated pages on art paper could be inserted into the centre of a text signature (section) or wrapped round a signature to spread the illustrations more evenly throughout a book. The 1960s saw the arrival of various systems of phototypesetting and an increased use of o≠set-litho printing, and these allowed text and illustrations to be more easily and cheaply integrated and printed on one paper stock which tended to be whiter and smoother than many papers used for books printed by letterpress. This quiet but far-reaching transformation of the printing industry also means that a book with artpaper sections, with illustrations printed from letterpress half-tones, now proclaims its age to even the technically uninformed reader.

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Despite the arrival of phototypesetting systems in the 1960s, few within the printing and publishing industries envisaged that by the last decades of the twentieth century lithography would have replaced letterpress as the mainstream medium for printing books and so have changed the physical appearance of illustrated books, including the covers which can be printed in full colour as, of course, can book-jackets without incurring prohibitive costs. Initially, the disadvantage of fastrunning lithographic machines was that there was a tendency towards pages that were tonally grey and lacking in the sparkle that good letterpress work had when dense black ink was literally pressed into the surface of the paper, whether the uneven surface of an antique paper or the smoother one of a more-calendered paper. For books without illustrations, a loyalty to the density of letterpress inks and the indentation of good typefaces into good paper was understandable, but technical advances allowed lithography to challenge and overcome these prejudices and today few readers will discern that popular novels are printed by lithography and not letterpress. No doubt Senefelder would be astonished to see that his use of large and heavy stones has developed into not only the large multi-colour and computer-controlled Heidelberg Speedmaster and the coldset web press that can print sixty-four pages of paperbacks in one pass, but also the fast-running small o≠set-litho machines that have further democratised the publication of well-printed books by the better small independent publishers often referred to as ‘small presses’, although few of them own a printing machine. Although now redundant in the face of the Apple Macintosh systems and design programmes such as QuarkXPress and image manipulation software such as Photoshop, another radical development at the end of the nineteenth century that expanded and altered the production of books was the arrival of hot-metal type composing machines. A hand compositor could compose some 2,000 letters an hour; the average output of a Linotype or Monotype operator was some 6,000 in the same time. An essential piece of equipment for these typesetting machines was a punch-cutting machine invented in 1844 by Linn Boyd Benton that made possible the production of the large number of punches needed to mass-produce typeface matrices for mechanical composing machines. The Linotype machine was invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler (1854–99) who had emigrated from Germany to the USA and, aided by the engineering skills of James O. Clephane, developed his mechanical typesetting machine in Baltimore. He saw the first Linotype installed in The New York Tribune in 1886. Tolbert Lanston (1844–1913) worked as a civil servant in Washington and, although lacking any engineering

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Figure 2.7 Using the Monotype keyboard.

training, he developed the Monotype composing system which comprised a keyboard and separate caster controlled by a punched paper spool. A Monotype composing machine was first produced in 1889, but there followed almost ten years of further development, with the engineering skills of John Sellers Bancroft being important, before Monotypes went into commercial use. Monotype composing machines are evidence of the thinking of an inventor of genius; Lanston gave the twentieth-century printing

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Figure 2.8 Linotype machines.

industry an engineering system as intellectually sound as any, in any area of technology, that came from the years between Gutenberg and the computers of the twentieth century. Unlike the Linotype machine, a Monotype keyboard and caster produced each letter separately rather than as a continuous metal line, and this not only gave more scope for the design of typefaces but allowed corrections and amendments to be made by a hand compositor, thereby reducing the cost of such work. In examining most commercial books produced in the United Kingdom using Linotype materials, the quality of the typesetting and the lines on the printed page will be seen to be inferior to those printed from Monotype typefaces. It is noticeable that the Linotype could not produce kerned letters but, more significantly for readability and good printing, there was also a tendency for less able operators to cast lines of type with letters that were not well formed and also had hair lines that were the same height as the letters and so printed between them. Excellent work could be done using Linotype, as limited editions printed in the UK and commercial editions from the USA show, but the system lacked the versatility of Monotype, that o≠ered good word and letter spacing and a matrix case that held six alphabets. With the options now available on an Apple Macintosh, the Monotype system

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may seem unexceptional, but for mechanical hot-metal setting it took skilful engineering to enable it to equal the quality of a hand-set book page and this was done by the sta≠ of the best Scottish book printers, including R. & R. Clark and T. & A. Constable in Edinburgh and Robert MacLehose in Glasgow.

Mechanical typesetting Parallel to the growth of the market for print during the nineteenth century, and the increasing speed at which it was possible to run printing presses, there were a number of attempts to mechanise the process of composing type and redistributing it after use. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, systems of mechanical composition came into use which finally solved the problems of combining typecasting, setting and distribution within a single system, and superseded the methods of hand composition which had fundamentally remained unchanged since its first introduction in the fifteenth century. The best known of these systems are Linotype (particularly popular in newspaper production) in which the hot metal was cast into type one line at a time and Monotype, used mainly for book work. Monotype was originally invented by Tolbert Lanston (1844–1913) in the 1880s but was not commercially available until the beginning of the twentieth century. One of the early pioneers in this field was Alexander Neill Fraser of the printing company Neill & Co., based in Edinburgh. Neill & Co. had a long history: the original partnership from which the firm grew was established in the mid-eighteenth century, and by the end of the nineteenth century it specialised in medical and law work as well as having a high proportion of government printing. The Neill family retained control for some time, but in 1828, Patrick Neill, grandson of the founder, took the firm’s manager, William Fraser, into partnership. William Fraser’s career was notable for his introduction to Edinburgh of large printing machines, and his support for Friendly Societies, including the Edinburgh Compositors’ Friendly Society. By 1851, his sons Alexander Neill Fraser and Patrick Neill Fraser had taken over control of the firm, on the deaths of both their father and Patrick Neill. Alexander Neill Fraser was born in 1830, and originally trained as a civil engineer but was diverted into the printing firm by the death of an older brother. According to the o∞cial history of Neill & Co., he applied his training and ‘knowledge of mechanics’ to speeding up the process of setting type by hand. Specifically he developed and patented machines for typesetting and distributing used type. These machines pre-dated the better-known Monotype and Linotype machines by twenty years, and were used for some time in Neill’s own printing works, as well as being marketed to other users. Although they had long been superseded by the more sophisticated technology of the

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Figure 2.9 Setting by hand.

Monotype in particular, an order for two machines was received at Neill & Co. in 1948. Alexander Neill Fraser himself died in 1909, four years after his invention had been superseded by the Monotype in his own firm. The Monotype system was by this time in use in other Scottish printing firms, for example R. & R. Clark. The system consisted of two separate units: the keyboard and the caster, with letters and spaces cast as individual pieces of type. The compositor sat at a keyboard, selecting the appropriate key for the characters and spaces in the text to be set; when the key was pressed, holes were punched in a roll of paper, each character being represented by a particular pattern of holes. As the compositor approached the end of a line, a bell rang allowing him or her to decide where to end the line, and to select the correct spacing to justify the text. On completion, the paper roll was transferred to the caster where the attendant selected the appropriate case of matrices and fixed a galley to the machine. The paper roll was passed over streams of compressed air which operated a series of

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pins to select the correct matrix for the character required, and move it into the mould. The type metal was injected into the mould so that each character was cast individually as required, and when a line of type was complete, it was ejected onto the galley. Thus a single operator was able to set approximately three times as much text in the same time as a compositor working by hand, and the time-consuming and tedious task of redistributing the type back into the cases after use was abolished. Because type was set individually, corrections were easier, and the casting machine could be used independently to cast type for stock, for use in small hand composing jobs, and for corrections. Helen Williams

The physical appearance of books is based on conventions, and even in this restless twenty-first century a publisher has to give very careful consideration to using a format or design that ignores them. These conventions include the dimensions of di≠erent classes of books, the use of roman typefaces with serifs, and the margins that surround the text. Traditionally the margins are known as back, head and foredge; to avoid the appearance of the type area falling o≠ the page there is more margin at the bottom of a page than at the top, and the inner margins are less than the outer margins as the eye sees a double-page text page opening as an entity, not as two separate pages. The most di∞cult convention for a maker of books to break successfully is the shape of the letters that form the words which form the lines and paragraphs of the text. The various e≠orts noticeably to redesign the standard shapes of the letters used to print English have met with prompt and complete failure. Partly for reasons of familiarity, sans serif typefaces have not been popular in Britain for book work, although it is also generally accepted by typographers that they are less readable for the many pages of a book than typefaces with serifs and, furthermore, that the horizontal serifs aid readability by helping to link the letters into words. Something of the strength of the conventions of book-making can be seen in the general adherence to the order in which the preliminary pages are traditionally printed. In his influential Introduction to Typography, Oliver Simon of the much-admired Curwen Press could state without preamble, books should normally be made up in the following order: Half-title, Title, ‘History’ of book, with imprint, Dedication, Acknowledgements, Contents, List of illustrations, List of abbreviations, Preface, Introduction, Corrigenda or errata (if any), Text of book, Appendix, Author’s notes, Glossary, Bibliography, Index. (xx)

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All the above, except the ‘history’ of the book, with the printer’s imprint, begin generally on a right-hand page.

Thomas Nelson & Sons A fire devastated Nelson’s printing works at Hope Park in Edinburgh in 1878, causing damage estimated between £100,000 and £200,000, only some of which was covered by the insurance on the buildings. Within two months Thomas Nelson & Sons were back in operation albeit on a limited scale. Within two years the production works moved to a new site near and Arthur’s Seat. The calamity had brought the fortuitous benefit of investment in new plant and machinery from which a flood of reprints, school books, prize books and religious books poured – all at inexpensive prices. E∞ciency had been gained not only through introduction of the latest technology but also through standardisation of the product. The books were grouped into various popular libraries, all to a standard size of 61⁄2 ⫻ 41⁄4 inches, such as the New Century Library that included titles by Dickens, Thackeray and Scott, ‘handy for the pocket or knapsack, and especially suitable for railway reading’. The Sixpenny Classics, later just Nelsons Classics, began in 1903 as a reprint series of non-copyright works and was eventually to consist of over 400 volumes; the Nelson Library, selling at 7d, o≠ered from 1907 reprints of copyright works in still familiar, at least to denizens of second-hand bookshops, red and gold cloth bindings. New titles were issued each fortnight and John Buchan, a recent addition to the firm, brought into the Classics fold works by James, Conrad and Wells. A Shilling Library provided a series of further copyright titles of general literature while several foreign series catered for languages other than English. A new factory was built in 1907 to undertake these and other series, capable of producing 200,000 books a week. However, the corollary of low prices is low profit margins and a dependence on maintaining high volume sales. From 1878 to 1881 fiction represented 40 per cent of the total books produced but only 10 per cent of the total profit made by the firm over the same period. Furthermore, books by certain authors such as Ballantyne were much more profitable than the norm; 53 per cent of the profit from fiction was derived from 17 per cent of the titles. The conclusion must be that the greater proportion of the fiction published by Nelson’s, including reprints, many of which were out of copyright, made very little money. Any contraction in constant volume sales would represent a threat to the company’s continuing health. The First World War itself, through the denial of foreign markets, the loss of manpower and the general exigencies of wartime led to the temporary rundown of Nelson’s and initiated their long-term decline. Much of the e≠ort

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expended during the inter-war period, particularly in expanding the education list and reducing the dependence on reprints, represented merely an attempt to reverse that decline. After the death of Thomas Nelson III in 1917, Ian Nelson, his brother, took over as head of the family firm. The take-over of the publishing house of T. C. & E. C. Jack in 1915, with their strengths in children’s titles, had consolidated the direction to which the company was to commit itself. Buchan brought in Sir Henry Newbolt, with whom he had worked in the Ministry of Information during the war, to act as editorial advisor in the educational field. Various series along the lines of its reprints were produced such as the Nelson School Classics. In part response to Newbolt’s own 1921 report on the teaching of English in schools in England and Wales, Nelsons produced in 1922 ‘The Teaching of English’ series (eventually running to some 200 titles) under the editorship of Newbolt himself and Richard Wilson. The latter also introduced a new type of school reader in Reading for Action and Read and Remember. A further series ‘The Teaching of History’ also grew out of Buchan and Newbolt’s collaboration. Ian Nelson remained head of the firm until his death in 1958. In the post-1945 period, this strategy was predominant: the education list became all-important to the company; and the tradition of cheap reprints, alive since its foundation, died. To compensate, overseas markets for text books were nurtured. The links Nelsons had had with the old Empire were reinforced in the new Commonwealth, especially in East and West Africa and the West Indies. In 1949 the Canadian branch became an independent company; in 1960 the Australian firm was established; in 1962 the South African branch was registered as a distinct company; a Nigerian company was set up in 1961; a Kenyan company followed in 1963: the development of Nelson’s paralleled Britain’s own movement from centre of Empire to member of Commonwealth. Even in 1887, a Royal Reader had been produced in the Nyanja language of what was then Nyasaland, now Malawi, and, sixty years on, Nelsons was publishing a wide range of textbooks in Kiswahili, Yoruba, Ewe, Twi and Ga. Specialist schoolbooks such as West Indian Histories and Malayan Arithmetics illustrated the company’s determination to retain its hold on an important but vulnerable market. Ian Nelson’s successor, his son, Ronnie Nelson, seemed less interested in the successful management of the family firm than previous generations. In 1962 Thomas Nelson & Sons were absorbed into the Thomson Organisation, in an e≠ort to sustain their academic and educational publishing interests on a global scale. In common with other publishing enterprises at the time, the production plant was divorced from the publishing division. The former remained in Edinburgh, while the latter took up permanent residence in London. The publishers began to seek and accept

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competitive quotations for production work from a variety of printers in Britain and more frequently abroad. The printing division of Nelsons was sold to the Edinburgh company Morrison & Gibb in 1968; the Parkside works, at one time the glory of the firm, were razed to the ground to make way for the headquarters of an insurance company. Alistair McCleery

Publishers of books that were printed in very large editions had the option of having paper made to their particular specification not only for the chemical make-up of the paper but also for its size. More often, however, the standard book paper sizes were used. These were: crown, demy and royal which were folded to be folio, quarto, octavo and sixteenmo. The standard trimmed octavo sizes were, in inches: crown 71⁄8 ⫻ 43⁄4; demy 83⁄8 ⫻ 53⁄8; and royal 95⁄8 ⫻ 6. The standard novel was crown octavo or a slight variation of this standard size. Demy octavo was the size for more commercial books, and superior collections of poetry and other somewhat grand literary works were published in royal octavo. Less emphasis is now put on using a traditional size and shape for a particular class of book, although many book buyers still have instinctive expectations of what a particular class of book should look like. Bibles are expected to be small and chunky, whilst specialists in the social sciences have expected books aimed at them to be squarer and chunkier than comparably-sized literary works. Art books often required a quarto size such as crown measuring 95⁄8 ⫻ 71 ⁄4 inches, or a landscape format with the width greater than the height; perhaps now surprising, what was sometimes known to letterpress printers as long demy octavo was not uncommon in the 1950s for shorter works with illustrations of art works. The British mass-produced paperback book began in July 1935 when Allen, Richard and John Lane launched Penguin Books, and the size of these books was 71⁄8 ⫻ 43⁄8 inches. This is identical to the size of the Albatross series of 1932 designed by Hans Mardersteig and is in the same proportions as a golden section rectangle, a format used by printers of books since the fifteenth century and which human beings find pleasing. Today some publishers are not issuing a case-bound first edition of a novel but a larger-format paperback which is followed by a smaller conventionally-sized paperback. From 1959, when the British Standards Institution published its adoption of what was termed International Paper Sizes, there was a gradual adoption by British paper manufacturers of the A and B paper sizes which in Germany dated from 1922 when Standards for

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Figure 2.10 Early twentieth-century proofing press.

Industry, Deutsche Industrie Normen, were established and known as DIN sizes. This has resulted in small publishers issuing many books in A5. Working within the conventions related to the printed book is acceptable, but o≠ering no variations within them can result in books that are indistinguishable and so fail in marketing terms if not in aesthetic ones. On a bookshelf we first judge a book by its cover; today that usually means the cover of a paperback or a book-jacket, but if we take the jacket o≠ we respond to the colour and texture of the binding. Authentic woven cloth can be more aesthetically pleasing than a synthetic material, as can untarnished genuine gold lettering on the spine when set beside a tarnished substitute. We may respond to the proportions of the height of a book in relation to the thickness of the spine; there is real skill in choosing a type size and margins that, combined with a good choice of paper, result in a book with pleasing height and width proportions whilst also meeting the cost factors that commercial publishers must work within. When these proportions are achieved, whether for commercial or aesthetic reasons, by having an obviously large type with pretentious margins or by using extra thick paper, a sensitive reader will respond with negative thoughts.

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A well-bound book will have unwarped boards; it should open easily and very importantly it should stay open e≠ortlessly – lie quiet as we read it. This will not be so if too thick a text paper has been chosen or the paper has been folded against the longer fibres that follow the flow of the pulp as the paper is made. There is no doubt that for ease of folding and binding the machine direction should be down the page, that is, parallel to the spine. The letterpress printer always preferred the grain of the paper parallel to the long edge of the sheet. A knowledgeable letterpress printer would choose an imposition scheme involving sixteen, thirty-two or sixty-four pages that achieved this. In selecting a suitable paper, whether it be plain or decorated, for the endpapers for a case-bound book, a designer has to remember that one leaf of it is pasted down to the front or back cover. The other leaf, known as the flyleaf, is pasted along the folded edge to the first or last page of the book. Some conventional aspects of good book production were functionally helpful when much binding work was done by hand. The signature marks at the foot of the first page of each folded signature (or section), which was often sixteen or thirty-two pages, were essential when gathering, collating and folding was done by hand. Today folding machines and gatherers with many stations for sections can do this work. Or, even more impressively, when a fully automatic binder with attached twelve station gatherer can do this work, signature marks do seem to belong to another age of book-making. Bibliographers of the future may regret a loss of signature marks in today’s books as they have been useful in checking that a book is perfect or in analysing the various states of various editions of important or rare books. Such bibliographical descriptions are another way of defining the book as physical object, as in this example describing a copy of a first edition. William Shakespeare. LVCRECE. London: Printed by richard field, for Iohn Harrison, and are to be sold at the signe of the white Greyhound in Paules Chur[c]h-yard. 1594. 4to. First edition. Nineteenth-century diced russia, gilt, marbled edges, padded with blanks. Collation: A2, B-M4, N2 ⫽ 48 leaves, unpaginated. The final leaf, N2, is lacking in this copy. Following the preliminary pages, the text pages were B1r-N1r. r indicates recto and the reverse side of a leaf was indicated by v, verso. Today, gilt top and marbled edges are rare, as are headbands at the top of spines which were an integral part of hand binding, but if used now for cased books are merely decorative and a device to suggest a deluxe product.

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Through its Bookbinding Competition, the National Library of Scotland has encouraged fine bookbinding. In 1934 Robert McLehose & Co Ltd, of Glasgow, printed, in Plantin type on Basingwerk Parchment paper from Grosvenor Chater, for Alexander MacLehose, The Devil in Scotland being Four Great Scottish Stories of Diablerie along with an Introductory Essay and Thirty-nine Original Wood Engravings by Douglas Percy Bliss. In 1994 Julian Thomas, who in 1980 became head of binding and conservation at the National Library of Wales, bound a copy of this book for the 1994 National Library competition. A description of this fine binding, given in The Anthony Dowd Collection of Modern Bindings (2002) shows that the traditional terminology used to describe a book has not been entirely lost: Bound . . . in black goatskin with recessed areas of red stained vellum and black lizard skin bordered by bevelled edges painted with red acrylic paint and onlays of red goatskin in a design representing flickering flames repeated on each board; red paper doublures; black calf flyleaves; black and gold silk endbands; top edge gilt; titled in gold on the spine. Signed in gold at the foot of the lower turn-in Julian J W Thomas. Black buckram solander box lined in felt with a black spine label titled in gold. While it interests those who buy very expensively bound books or the less expensive but well-designed books published by the Folio Society, the abandonment of gilt top edges is not a development that is going to interest the everyday buyer of books in Waterstones or Borders. The same may be said of the progress of phototypesetting and digital type systems through the publishing and printing industries, as the nonspecialist user of books will note few significant changes in the physical appearance of most books; editorial and production practices have, however, been radically changed and these can result in a di≠erent end product. Authors often now supply texts on discs, and when fewer stages of proofreading take place in the o∞ces of both publishers and printers, this can result in a lowering of editorial standards. Small publishers can lack training in using desktop facilities and allow both editorial and production standards to fall. Certainly the progress of phototypesetting and digital type systems has been a roller-coaster of lows and highs, benefits and losses. This has been so for most of the important technological changes that have come to printing since Gutenberg produced movable types. The phototypesetting decades involved much financial investment by the established companies, including Monotype and Linotype, and by those who introduced innovative systems and yet, in retrospect, phototypesetting was

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a brief opening and closing of lenses before the arrival of the digital systems that truly screened out the Gutenberg centuries. The first commercial use of the early photocomposition machines in the UK was most probably in Glasgow in 1956. By the early 1960s a small number of machines were in use; by the mid-1960s many Scottish firms had installed second-generation machines (electromechanical, matrix fonts); and by 1968 third-generation machines were being used. It was in 1965 that Dr Rudolf Hell announced the Digiset phototypesetter. This system was the first to use digitised fonts which were generated as images on an output cathode ray tube (CRT) and from it exposures, using an optical system, were made onto photo-sensitive materials. In 1968 the Compugraphic Corporation (to become part of Agfa) introduced what was then seen as reasonably-priced phototypesetting machines. The Linotron 202 of the late 1970s brought digital outline fonts into more general use, as did the CRTronic direct-entry machine of 1979. The disadvantage of the early Linotron and CRTronic machines was that they used straight lines to define the outlines of letters and if they had not been superseded it is likely that the standard of typesetting for bookwork would have declined. The development of methods of encoding characters using line and arc was an important breakthrough in improving standards and this certainly helped to establish the Varityper Com/Edit 6400 phototypesetter which o≠ered fonts developed with the 1979 Spirascan digitising process of Peter Purdy and Ronald McIntosh. The Monotype Lasercomp of 1976 has been seen as the first commercially successful digital laser imagesetter, and its success certainly helped to turn Monotype round commercially as the Typography Division became significant in making digital type for the Lasercomp. In 1974 Vinton Gray Cerf and Bob Kahn published a paper in which they described their TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) system and that can now be popularly seen as the system which has made the internet possible, with Vint Cerf hailed as ‘the father of the internet’. In 1972 the first straw in the wind of what became WYSIWYG – what you see is what you get – could be glimpsed, but it passed unnoticed by most printers and publishers. In 1972 many in publishing and printing did notice that Monotype had closed their o∞ces at 43 Fetter Lane where Beatrice Warde had been so important and Stanley Morison a dark-suited but enlightening presence; Dr Morison had died in 1967 and Mrs Warde in 1969. In 1987 the Monotype Corporation ended their production of hotmetal keyboards and casters; in the USA the Lanston Monotype Machine Company had been liquidated in 1969 and in the following

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Figure 2.11 Imposed type.

year the Mergenthaler Linotype Company ended production of hotmetal Linotypes in the USA although, for a time, the machines continued to be made in the UK and Germany. Quite suddenly compositors belonged to a redundant trade and Gutenbergian hot-metal types had to be melted down nationwide. It was particularly bathetic that the old typecases, when sold to antique shops, were worth more than Monotype metal. The International Typeface Corporation (ITC) was founded in 1970 and it not only commissioned new type designs but licensed them to all those who subscribed to the service it o≠ered. In traditional bookwork the arrival of many new exotic typefaces made little impact. Ten years later the IBM personal computer arrived. By that date the Ikarus font digitisation system, which had been developed by Peter Karow and Florenz Walter Brendel in Hamburg, was five years old and the first large digitised type libraries were being formed. In 1981 appeared the now almost legendary Xerox Star 8010. The history of the development by Apple of the Macintosh is certainly obscured by legend and conflicting accounts of when Steve Jobs visited Xerox’s famous Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to see the innovative

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Xerox Star computer which featured a small external device that controlled the on-screen cursor and also a user interface which involved windows and icons. This Xerox Star was priced at $50,000 and the aim of Steve Jobs, and presumably Steve Wozniak, was to produce a much cheaper personal computer. Although we do not know quite how much the Apple Macintosh, as developed by Jobs, Jef Raskin and others, was influenced by the Xerox Star, what is clear is that this was the first reasonably-priced personal computer to employ a graphical user interface. Jerry Mannock, who had designed the Apple II, was commissioned by Jobs to design the first Macintosh, which was launched in 1984 as a challenge to the dominance of IBM. In 1983 Adobe Systems Inc. gave a first glimpse of PostScript, its revolutionary page description language and also, with PageMaker, Apple were positioned to be central to the development of desktop publishing. Within PostScript was a system for describing type fonts, and with its arrival backward-looking hot-metal perfectionists were obliged to consider before being too superior about reasonably-priced systems. In his 1997 essay ‘Monotype Time Check’ in The Monotype Recorder 10, Lawrence Wallis wrote succinctly that by 1985: All the elements vital to the desktop publishing revolution were in place, namely: the Apple Macintosh computer with graphical interface and WYSIWYG screen; the Adobe PostScript page description language with rasterizer and digital fonts; the Aldus PageMaker program for electronically assembling pages complete with digital graphics; and a range of PostScript output devices exemplified by the low-resolution Apple LaserWriter plain paper printer and high-resolution Linotron 101 and Linotronic 300 imagesetters. Soon there were: cheap scanners for photographs, graphics generally and Optical Character Recognition (OCR); QuarkXpress costing around £1,000; cheap laser printers; and there was the arrival of the internet. With letterpress printing, the use of hard-wearing electrotypes could improve the quality of long-run editions as the plates did not wear as quickly as the original pages of types from which they were made. Similarly, the introduction of OCR and the professional scanning of out-of-print books has proved to be an improvement technically on the photographic copying of pages for cheap photo-litho reprints. In 1989 Apple Computer Inc. moved out of display PostScript and decided to develop their own version of this language, and so there emerged the TrueType format. In 1990 Monotype Typography licensed to Microsoft a set of thirteen core fonts for use in the Windows and

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OS/2 environments, and Adobe Systems also licensed Monotype fonts for their Type Library. The typographic world had again been extended for both professional and untrained users of type and, while the look of the book may not have noticeably changed, the cost of book publishing had again gone down. For Scottish letterpress book printers, the development of phototypesetting, which encouraged an increase in the use of o≠set-litho printing, was bad news, as to replace the slower-running letterpress machines involved large capital investment. Even worse news came with the radical changes brought about by the arrival of desktop publishing. Specialist film-setting firms were set up and they undermined the comprehensive services of typesetting, printing and binding that the long-established printing houses o≠ered. Worse, the films produced by the typesetters could be sent by publishers to good printers in, say, Hong Kong or Singapore who could print and ship books to the UK at prices the Scottish long-established printers could not match. The arrival of CDs and electronic transmission not only speeded up this development but allowed multi-media use of the texts produced by authors and typesetters. Again these changes a≠ected the average book buyer only in that the price of a mass-produced book could again have gone down. The physical look of a book typeset in a one-person o∞ce and printed o≠set-litho in Hong Kong, given skilled operators and wellspecified materials, need be no less satisfactory to discerning eyes than one produced by letterpress in bygone days in the large works of R. & R. Clark. As the twentieth century ended, the technical expert in Dusseldorf for the trade fair, DRUPA 2000, could see not only the Heidelberg group’s ten-unit Speedmasters, web-fed machines for newsprint and magazines, and scanning, assembly and plate or film production devices working at speeds once unthinkable, but also digital presses, including the NexPress produced in co-operation with Kodak. In 1998 IBM, in advertising for their on-demand print technology, were able to claim that their InfoPrint Manager could ‘manage the entire process of printing books – from digital library management to the production and finishing of colour covers and all the pages in between. And with print quality that can surprise even the most sceptical print buyer.’ In 2000, with such machines readily available, it could be asked, how long will it be before the camera is as redundant in printing o∞ces as hot-metal types? By printing directly from CDs, and so eliminating platemaking, short-run digital printing further cuts the cost of book printing. Manufacturers of digital printing machines give assurances on the permanence of pages printed by their machines. What is now

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clear is that, in unskilled hands, short-run digital printing can reproduce illustrations that are dark and smudgy or light and lacking in tonal richness. Here, as with so many other developments from the 1880s to 2000 that resulted in a general lowering of production standards, exceptions show that the deficiencies are not in the machines but in those that use them. The typographer, and the professional type designer, by 2000, could take as normal what had previously been thought impossible; even a small desktop publisher with a PC or Mac could turn to a type library that brought together fonts from many companies. The companies that had manufactured hot-metal typesetting systems were obviously well placed to set up type libraries. Heidelberg were also showing at DRUPA 2000 their latest CD of typefaces available from their Linotype Library which had typefaces totalling more than 4,000 fonts in PostScript and TrueType format, not only from Linotype but from twenty-seven other owners of copyright including, to list only the larger ones: Adobe, Esselte, ITC and Monotype. Similarly, the Creative Alliance catalogue of Agfa Monotype showed over 7,000 fonts from all the main copyright holders. Again, we may see this as not having a noticeable e≠ect on the look of the average book. Thanks to personal computers, Times New Roman, designed by Stanley Morison with the help of Victor Lardent for The Times newspaper, is now the most used typeface in the world; it can be an excellent design for general printing and certainly was ideal for the paper and machines used to print The Times in the 1930s. It can also be right for reference works, but I regard the tonal pattern that it makes when used for the pages of novels, biographies and most books of a literary nature as o≠-putting to the everyday browser in a bookshop. This is an untutored and instinctive response by a book buyer to the book as a physical object, but it is one that publishers should not ignore. It is also a personal view and may not be generally accepted, but many typographers agree that the arrival of computerised typefaces can result in a lowering of design standards. The equivalents of spidery typefaces of the nineteenth-century letterpress book are re-emerging in weak digitised forms. The Monotype Corporation took pride in harmonising the various sizes of a typeface; today, using personal computers, a small size of some typefaces can look unrelated to larger sizes of the same font, and in some fonts the capital letters are heavier than the lower-case ones. This is not only a matter of aesthetics, as a page spotted with heavier capitals is less readable than one with a better-designed typeface. Each

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revolution in book production methods has o≠ered not only exciting new production techniques but also, at least for a time, resulted in a decline in production standards. Whatever criticism may be made of its production throughout the centuries, the printed book is a remarkable survivor. For sales catalogues, paper may soon be redundant. Today’s computers and their programmes will soon be redundant; that is certain, although we cannot foresee the replacing systems. Currently we can say that for stored information that does not need upgrading, downloading or batteries, there is nothing to challenge a book printed on durable paper. That said, in 1951, when no-one could foresee that letterpress printing would become obsolete, Ruari McLean ended his Modern Book Design with sentences that are rooted in the same soil as nourished the first humanists, those who created the Scottish Enlightenment, and also the typographers of the twentieth-century revival of printing in Britain and the USA: Printing does not consist essentially in impressing types on to paper. It consists in mass-producing identical copies of what has been written in order to be read. We must not be stubborn in accepting new methods and materials if they are improvements on the old. We have come to love books the way they are, for the black impression of type and the tactile qualities of paper. But it is the contents that are important, and it does not matter what the materials and techniques of printing are, so long as they are kindly and humane, and serve the purposes of literature, and freely, in the future as in the past, let love, music, hurricane / enter and rush like ghosts through that old cave, the human brain.

Typography Duncan Glen The year 1880 is not a good one with which to start an enquiry into the state of typography in Scotland or indeed in Europe generally. It is not an exaggeration to say that during the late nineteenth century the design and production of books was generally at a low level throughout Europe. Printing on paper from movable typefaces was invented to produce books in quantity but, whilst the technological changes that began towards the end of the eighteenth century increased output and lowered costs, by the last decades of the nineteenth century all too often quality had been sacrificed for quantity. Part of the decline in the standards of book printing was due to the unfortunate coincidence of this increase in productivity with the popularity of ‘modern’ typefaces with their exaggerated di≠erence between the thick and thin strokes of the letterforms. These types required particularly good presswork, but the use of weak and undistinguished ‘modern’ typefaces was exaggerated by poor presswork which resulted in grey pages, quite lacking the sparkle that is a feature of good letterpress printing. Also, standards in typesetting had declined. An essential of good typography and a good-looking page of a book is that the words are set close together; no further apart than the width of the letter ‘i’ (which on many book typefaces was near enough a mid space) has been a long-standing guide. Many nineteenth-century compositors were paid by the number of lines they set and this encouraged wide spacing between words, at the end of sentences and after semicolons and other punctuation marks. An em quad of the size of type being set became the standard at the end of sentences and a en space (half an em) was preferred between words, rather than a mid space which was half the width of an en. This could create what has been termed ‘rivers’ in the page; words fell above one another in successive 122

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Figure 2.12 Precision of type.

lines and so made narrow open areas of white down a page; these encouraged the eye to slip out of lateral reading. We are concerned with readability here. The size of the typeface influences readability, with too large a type being as unhelpful as too small a one. For good readability the type size has to be related to the length of line; from eight to eleven words in a line of prose is acceptable, with the sixty-six-character line (counting both letters and spaces) widely seen as ideal for a single-column page. If there are fewer words the eye has to work harder; it has to stop, turn, drop, and then restart too many times. If the line is too long it will not be a comfortable ‘eyeful’. The interlineal space has to be linked to the printed size of type and to the length of line. Given good readability, close and even typesetting and good even inking by the printer, a book page has an even texture and tonal values that not only make reading easier but also attract the eye through being aesthetically pleasing. A glance at popular nineteenth-century editions of the novels of Sir Walter Scott, with small type and too little space between the lines, reveals the gulf that existed between the best book printers and the average. It has been suggested that a revival of good book printing in Europe began in England in the 1890s with William Morris who, especially

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because of the Kelmscott Chaucer, has been seen as the equal of any British printer. The Kelmscott Press of the 1890s encouraged others to found private presses with the aim of producing beautiful and very expensive books. The Doves Press of T. J. Cobden-Sanderson and Emery Walker (founded in London in 1900) produced a masterpiece of typesetting and letterpress printing in a five-volume edition of the Bible but, like the Kelmscott Chaucer, it is a book to admire as a work of art and craft rather than to read. Morris’ importance to the revival of good book printing in Britain was not in the design of his typefaces or richly decorated pages, but his emphasis on good typesetting and the unit of an opening of a book which is not one page but two facing ones. In Scotland there has been no private press that belongs in the company of Kelmscott and Doves, but the high quality of work produced by commercial printers in Edinburgh is culturally more important than the very expensive books produced by Morris and his followers. In any account of typography in Scotland in the last decades of the nineteenth century two Edinburgh printers must feature prominently, namely R. & R. Clark, founded in 1846, and T. & A. Constable, Printers to the University of Edinburgh, who, in 1973, could claim to be the oldest surviving firm of printers in Edinburgh. When in 1833 T. & A. Constable moved to larger works in Thistle Street, they were headed by a new director, Thomas Constable, who died in 1881 and was followed by his son Archibald. Thomas Constable became King’s Printer in 1835 and in 1859 he assumed what was to be a long-lasting role, namely Printer to the University of Edinburgh. Despite the printing trade being generally in recession in 1930 T. & A. Constable moved into new larger works in Hopetoun Street. The early printers were proud of their marks and although it may have been the Chiswick Press in London that first revived the use of a printer’s mark, both R. & R. Clark and T. & A. Constable quickly took up this idea. One of Clark’s early marks was drawn by Walter Crane and in his The Decorative Illustration of Books (1896) he wrote, ‘We have had good work from the Edinburgh houses, Messrs R. & R. Clark and Messrs Constable.’ Messrs Constable had a pictorial device showing a ship in full sail and a large version of it can be seen in the issues of The Evergreen. A Northern Seasonal which was published in the 1890s ‘in the Lawnmarket of Edinburgh by Patrick Geddes and colleagues’. Like the Celtic Renascence, which Geddes named and promoted through The Evergreen, this is an interesting if flawed production. It is very well printed in a strong typeface but the laid paper is over-thick and, although the binding is good and allows the book to open well, the

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boards are noticeably heavy. The line-block illustrations by John Duncan and Robert Burns give this production an attractive period flavour and they look better on the pages than the text which, due to excessive margins, especially the head one, is a square area that fights against the paper area. Also, like the famous Doves Bible of 1903–5, the text lines do not have enough interlineal space. It was W. B. Blaikie (1848–1928) who, as chairman of the company, established T. & A. Constable as exceptional book printers. A cousin of R. L. Stevenson, Blaikie had trained as a railway engineer but continued the tradition of scholar printers by also being a historian and astronomer. Clark’s reputation was established by Robert Clark (1825–94) who aimed to give the finest possible service and the highest possible quality of work and to charge the highest possible price. This was also the policy of his successor in the company, William Maxwell. These Edinburgh printers were fortunate that, before the arrival of Monotype machines, they could buy fonts of very good types from Miller & Richard who for many years were based at Reekie’s Close, o≠ Nicolson Street, on the south side of Edinburgh. By 1805 not one of the ‘old face’ fonts of the original Mr Caslon was being advertised in the specimen book of the company that bore his name. The stage – the fashion – was set for the emergence of William Miller and the ‘modern’ faces that became known as ‘Scotch’. However, the ‘modern’ types in the ‘Scotch’ style of Alexander Wilson preceded those of Miller, who learned the trade at the Wilson foundry before, about 1807, setting up his own. As Miller & Richard, the company he founded made a significant contribution to the history of Scottish book printing. Also, with an extensive home market, Miller & Richard were able to compete very successfully in London and overseas. From Siân Reynolds’ Britannica’s Typesetters (1989) we learn that as late as 1911, when mechanical composition was replacing hand-setting, six Edinburgh printers were each employing more than 100 compositors: Morrison & Gibb 282; R. & R. Clark 234; Ballantyne & Hanson 215; Neill & Co 154; T. & A. Constable 125; Turnbull & Spears 104. Also, Blackwood had eighty-one, Nelson seventy-three, Oliver & Boyd fifty, Chambers twenty-seven and Pillans & Wilson twenty-five. In his Practical Hints on Decorative Printing (1822) William Savage wrote that Miller not only ‘derived his knowledge of the art from’ working in the Wilson foundry, but his ‘modern’ types so much resembled theirs ‘as to require a minute and accurate inspection to be distinguished’. In his Typographia of 1825, T. C. Hansard near enough repeated Savage’s words. It was in America that the ‘modern’ types of William Miller and Alexander Wilson were first called ‘Scotch’. In the

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Figure 2.13 Compositors.

first years of the twentieth century designers of new versions of a ‘Scotch’ face tended to favour a William Miller Pica, shown as New Pica Roman No. 2 in Miller’s 1813 specimen book. About 1882 some new characters were cut for this design when Miller & Richard supplied T. & A. Constable with types cast from the original matrices. Within Constables these types were known as Dryden, because they first used them for a new edition of Dryden’s works. In A Tally of Types (1973) Stanley Morison, assisted by James Mosley of St Bride’s Printing Library, wrote what remains the best description of Miller’s finest ‘modern’: The most distinctive size was the Pica, shown in Miller’s specimen of 1813 as the ‘New Pica Roman, No. 2’ . . . Of all the sizes cut by Miller, the pica was the most distinctive: it was a broad letter with very heavy and idiosyncratic capitals. The C and G have slightly canted upper serifs, and a distinct slant to the stress of the curves. Nothing like these capitals appears in any of the other sizes of Miller’s romans, nor of Wilson’s; but curiously enough these same features are to be seen in the series of Two-line Pearl Titling Capitals cut by Wilson, and also cut by Miller. Not only did Miller show these capitals in his specimen of 1813 as Titling Capitals; in

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the same specimen the identical letters are shown as capitals for his ‘New Pica Roman, No. 2’. In revising the pica for use by Constables, these idiosyncrasies were retained by Miller & Richard, but they recut the letters S, e and t to meet the current taste. Unhappily they also selected an odd combination of heavy capitals and light lowercase which had only appeared once – in a specimen of 1814. The result is a very curious type in which neither roman nor italic capitals quite match the lower-case. (29–30) In 1935, in an Introduction to W. Turner Berry and A. F. Johnson’s Catalogue of Specimens of Printing Types by English and Scottish Printers and Founders, 1665–1830, Morison had recognised the worth of Miller’s font, writing that it was: a fount whose virtues appear to have been completely overlooked at the time. This design, now known to the trade variously as Scotch Old Face or Scotch Roman, would have a fair claim to rank as the Scottish National Face if circumstances had been otherwise. But in the fifties the Miller & Richard foundry brought out . . . a sort of diluted version of Caslon’s Old Face known to the trade as ‘Revived Old Style’. The Scotch Roman, cut originally in 1808, was laid aside immediately and never given the consideration it deserved until Messrs T. & A. Constable secured its exclusive use and printed a number of very handsome books in it, for some years after 1882. The Scotch Roman, though a modern face within the Bell-Austin tradition, possesses an individuality distinguishing it from the other members of the group. The fount, released by Messrs Constable, is much used at the present day, being suitable for working upon smooth and coated papers . . . the fount possesses boldness of character and orderliness in the disposition of colour. (xx) The ‘Revived old Style’ of Miller & Richard was certainly an improvement on most of the ‘modern’ typefaces and was much copied by other manufacturers in England, continental Europe and the USA, but it was tonally too even and even the best printers produced bland books when using it. The printing arm of the British government, HM Stationery O∞ce (HMSO), was established in 1783 and in 1922 was responsible for a Report on the Best Faces of Types and Modes of Display for Government Printing. The advisory committee which issued this rather interestingly-titled report included Joseph Thorp, pioneer of the concept of a typographic designer and author of Printing for Business

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Figure 2.14 Monotype keyboard at Nelsons, c. 1950.

(1919) and George W. Jones, eminent printer and adviser to Linotype, and they recommended the use of Old Style for all text and Caslon Old Face for all display settings. Possibly that was a good choice in 1922 when Monotype were only beginning their programme of typeface revivals. In 1945 Sir Francis Meynell became Honorary Typographic Adviser to HMSO, and the first head of a new HMSO design unit was Harry Carter who, immediately before the war, had worked for Meynell at Nonesuch Press. The typefaces that were then recommended for use by printers of government material were: Times, Baskerville and Plantin for Monotype or Linotype; Bell, Bembo and Imprint for Monotype; and Georgian and Granjon for Linotype. The reserves for printers who did not have one of these types were Monotype Old Style No. 2 and Linotype Bookprint, although printers could suggest other good typefaces. Monotype Bembo was issued in 1929 and based on a typeface used by Aldus for an edition of Pietro Bembo’s De Aetna, Venice (1498); in Britain in the twentieth century it was the most popular typeface for literary books printed by letterpress and the best Scottish book printers held it to meet the demands of many publishers.

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The specification in the mid-1940s of Old Style as a reserve for HMSO work revealed the staying power of a good typeface which was still, at least as late as the 1950s, the main body, and open case, type in many medium-size printers with a wide range of work from general jobbing to local magazines and the occasional book. The HMSO listing also shows that by the 1940s Old Style was regarded as more than a little dull, but in the 1850s it was a remarkable design by Alexander C. Phemister for Miller & Richard and, indeed, in 1935, Stanley Morison in his Introduction to Berry and Johnson’s Catalogue, saw it as ‘the beginning of another tradition in English [sic] type-design’. Old Style is seen to good e≠ect in the Book of Common Prayer (1863) which R. & R. Clark printed for John Murray in black and red with ornamental initials. In the first decade of the twentieth century William Maxwell of R. & R. Clark was keen to convince his customers that, given well-trained keyboard operators, mechanical typesetting by Monotype could not be distinguished from hand-setting. Clarks had installed Monotypes as early as 1901 or 1902 and Maxwell was described by James Moran, in his Stanley Morison. His Typographic Achievement (1971), as Monotype’s ‘first big customer’. In 1909, when the 1911 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica was being printed, the three Edinburgh firms involved, R. & R. Clark, Morrison & Gibb and Ballantyne & Hanson, had all installed Monotype machines, with the keyboards still often worked by women. The English firms that were given a share of printing this edition, the last to be printed in Britain, were John Clay and Richard Clay & Sons, of London, Bungay and Cambridge. The Monotype Corporation had produced what were two versions of Caslon Old Face, Series No. 20 of 1903 and Series No. 45 of 1906, although neither of these faces carried the Caslon name, but to please Clark’s customers what Maxwell wanted from a new Monotype Caslon (Series No. 128 of 1916) was a type with the appearance of the original Caslon foundry type as it had looked when printed on the old machines and papers. Maxwell’s first response to the typeface was that Monotype had overdone the uneven look of their imitation Caslon, but the favourable response of Clark’s customers no doubt led him to view the face di≠erently. In 1916, when Clarks were printing, for Macmillan, J. W. Fortescue’s History of the British Army, wartime shortages of supplies of Caslon from the typefounders encouraged them to pressurise Monotype to supply them quickly with matrices to complete the setting of this book by using the new Monotype Caslon. Edinburgh printing folklore said that Macmillan did not notice the di≠erence between the hand-set pages and those set by Monotype.

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Equally famous in the history of Clarks is how William Maxwell convinced the opinionated, but finally amateurish, George Bernard Shaw that Monotype machine-setting was as good as hand-set foundry type. Shaw, who did not trust publishers, did his own publishing and gave Clark’s a monopoly of printing his books. Having acquired his views on good printing from William Morris, who detested the ‘modern’ faces, initially Shaw would have no type other than Caslon Old Face. He had also learned about good packing of letters and close and even spacing between words. At Clarks Maxwell had two specimen pages of one of Shaw’s books prepared; one was hand-set in founder’s Caslon, the other was machine-set using the new Monotype Caslon. When Shaw was shown the two settings, without being informed which was which, he picked the machine-set page as being the better. No doubt Maxwell spread this story to persuade his other conservative and opinionated customers to accept machine typesetting. The Monotype Corporation would be equally happy to have this publicity. Maxwell may perhaps also be given the credit for introducing Shaw to the new typefaces being produced by Monotype and persuading him, in the mid-1920s, to abandon Caslon in favour of Monotype Fournier. In November 1945 Allen Lane of Penguin Books told Shaw that he wished to mark the writer’s 90th birthday by reissuing ten of his works in print runs of 100,000 each. Clearly pleased, Shaw happily agreed, ‘provided Willie can do it’ – Willie being Dr William Maxwell of R. & R. Clark. Although Shaw did not know it, we learn from Penguin Special: The Life and Times of Allen Lane by Jeremy Lewis, that Clarks undertook only a proportion of this massive printing and the rest was subcontracted to other printers, although the books carried Clark’s imprint. The million copies of these ten books sold out in six weeks and at a party for Shaw’s birthday the usually restrained Stanley Morison toasted the milestone as the period’s most significant trend in publishing. Shaw sent a congratulatory message attesting to R. & R. Clark’s place in his own literary career, calling it as natural a part of his work as the pen he used for writing. Other authors whose works benefited from the skill of the sta≠ at Clarks included R. L. Stevenson, Thomas Hardy, H. G. Wells, Charles Dickens, Rudyard Kipling and W. B. Yeats. The Nonesuch Press twentythree volume edition of Dickens (1937) printed with the original illustrations by ‘Phiz’ and Cattermole, was limited to 877 copies. The Sussex edition of Kipling’s works (1937), was limited to 525 copies and bound in full red morocco with top edge gilt. An edition of Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in Seven Parts, published by A. & R. Lane in 1945, had illustrations by Duncan Grant, and was limited to 700

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copies that were printed in red and black and bound in full blue morocco, top edge gilt; the binding being by Henderson & Bisset. Yeats’ The Collected Poems, published by Macmillan in 1950, was standard good R. & R. Clark printing but his two-volume Poems (1949), was bound in buckram, bevelled boards and top edge gilt, and limited to 350 sets signed by the author. Alongside these expensive editions Clarks printed many mass-produced paperback books for Penguin Books. In the more upmarket King Penguin Book series, Alfred Fairbank’s A Book of Scripts (1949) is a good example of the influential typographic design work done by Jan Tshichold during his all-too-short time at Penguin; significantly, only the text pages were printed by R. & R. Clark. That Clarks could work well with not only Shaw but an illustrator is shown by the quality of Shaw’s The Adventures of the Black Girl in her Search for God (1932). Shaw commissioned and paid John Farleigh to design and illustrate the book and there was constant communication with the printer even, we learn from Alan Bartram in his Five Hundred Years of Book Design ‘having a meeting with him, the machine-minder, the paper-maker and the ink-maker’ (141). The patience of the printer was rewarded in that, says Bartram, the first print run of 25,000 copies was sold out within two or three hours and it was reprinted twice in the same week. By the early 1900s, Edinburgh book printers, although still maintaining high standards of typesetting and printing, were increasingly facing strong competition from printers who had moved out of London to the Home Counties and the West of England – Frome, Bungay, Beccles and other centres. P. M. Handover suggested in Printing in London from 1476 to Modern Times that the London printers had su≠ered a decline in bookwork because of competition from Scottish printing, whose low wages and low overheads drew printing work away from London in the second half of the nineteenth century. John Child, in Industrial Relations in the British Printing Industry, saw Edinburgh printers getting bookwork ‘owing to the fairly general use of women’ (160). Perhaps Colin Clair was nearer the mark, in his A History of Printing in Britain, 1965, when he saw the ‘excellence of machining’ (249) as being important to Edinburgh’s high reputation with London publishers. Whilst the Edinburgh printers did benefit from paying lower wages, those in provincial English towns benefited from their employees paying lower rents for their houses than their Edinburgh counterparts. Also, freight costs from places near London were considerably less than those incurred by Edinburgh printers. Women were employed as compositors in Edinburgh printing o∞ces from 1872 and their arrival has been linked to the strike of that year

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Figure 2.15 Minutes of the Edinburgh Typographical Sick Society, discussing whether women should be admitted to the society.

although, as Siân Reynolds notes in her Britannica’s Typesetters, they were not, in any proper use of the words, ‘strike breakers’ (43). The question of female compositors and female keyboard operators came to a head in 1910 when a dispute between employers and employees ended with an agreement that, whilst the women employed in composing rooms would remain, no new recruits were to be taken on before 30 June 1916. Also, all new Monotype keyboards were to be operated by male union labour. This was a reversal of the position when Monotype

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keyboards were first introduced to Edinburgh printing works; then not only the employers but the male compositors regarded operating them as a more suitable job for female sta≠ than men whose seven-year apprenticeship taught skills that did not include keyboard ones, which appeared to be akin to the decidedly female occupation of typist. The war ended any hope of female sta≠ being employed in 1916 and Edinburgh gradually lost the distinction of employing female compositors. By the 1930s not only were the firms that had moved out of London undercutting the quality printers in Edinburgh but also, as lending libraries spread and many good cheap editions were available, there was less demand for high-quality books.

Women compositors In late Victorian and Edwardian Scotland, it was not unusual for women to be employed in some aspect of the making of books. As well as working in various paper trades, they were widely employed in bookbinding, for example, which was considered a respectable trade for a working-class girl to enter. But they never served full apprenticeships, being largely confined to semi-skilled tasks such as paper folding and stitching into sections. The remaining more skilled processes were handled by journeymen binders. In the printing trade, by contrast, Scotland was the scene of an unusual episode. The skilled trades of typesetting and presswork had been historically reserved for men, with women handling only unskilled jobs such as machine-feeding in the press room. Towards the end of the nineteenth century however, some employers and promoters of women’s employment suggested that young women with basic education would be well-suited to the highly-skilled trade of compositor, in an industry where typesetting was still done by hand. One or two experimental all-women printing-houses appeared both in Scotland and England at this time, but very few women compositors thereafter remained in the trade south of the border, because of the e≠ective opposition of the male craft trade unions, particularly in London. The large-scale employment of women in Edinburgh bookprinting houses in the years before the First World War was therefore an exceptional situation in Britain. It had come about gradually, following a strike by the Edinburgh print workers in 1873. Although the strike had been defeated largely by the use of non-union male labour, the idea of training girls as apprentice typesetters was put into practice for the first time that year. The early entrants, few in number, were often orphans needing a trade, but also included some of the daughters of male compositors. Perhaps for this reason, as well as because of the temporarily weak position of the men’s union, the Edinburgh

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Typographical Society, opposition was initially muted, and with order books full, no men’s jobs were threatened. A few women were employed in Aberdeen and Glasgow in similar fashion, though their numbers were always small. But it soon became clear that in Edinburgh women were part of a revolution in working practices. The city was in the later decades of the nineteenth century a leading centre for book printing, with several of the larger firms handling major contracts for publishers from both sides of the border. It had a reputation for doing ‘the finest work without asking a fancy price for it’ (Scottish Typographical Circular 1888: 710). Its competitiveness with English centres was, however, precarious. The chief reason that employers in houses such as R. & R. Clark, Neills, Morrison & Gibb and others employed women was that they reduced costs, by being required to do continuous ‘straight setting’ of unbroken copy, without being paid the same wages as a time-served journeyman compositor. Women were not admitted to the union precisely because they were not paid standard male rates, although their pay was not far o≠ that of casual male workers. The young women in question – whose ages were mostly in the range 16–30 – did not receive a full apprenticeship, but were trained as typesetters, with the finishing tasks such as imposition being handled by men. Nevertheless, women compositors were carrying out work more highly skilled and better paid than virtually any other kind of industrial employment open to their sex. They set all kinds of bookwork, from learned works and foreign languages to popular novels and children’s books. They also derived considerable job satisfaction from it – something rare in the world of women’s work at this period. As one woman put it in her old age, ‘I loved my work. I’d have worked weekends if they’d have let me’ (Interview 1986). By 1910, Edinburgh printing firms were employing a total of 850 women compositors as opposed to about 1,000 men. (The only large firm that did not employ them was Nelsons, whose competitiveness lay elsewhere, in modern technology.) But the situation was about to change. The catalyst was the introduction of Monotype machines into book production in Edinburgh in the 1900s. At first, these machines were all operated by women, since the men were reluctant to learn what looked like ‘typewriting’. Large contracts, such as the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911 edition) then under production, were being handled by women. The union saw the threat and reacted with strike notices. Negotiations with the employers resulted in the men’s request being granted that no more women would be recruited as learners for a period of six years, and that Monotype machines would be shared. The women at the centre of the dispute had intervened with their own opinions – on both sides of the argument. Coming from the same social milieu as the men, they all saw the problem as one of unequal

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pay, but while some supported the men’s case in terms of class solidarity, others protested in the name of women’s rights. One positive result of the dispute was that a women’s branch of the ETS was formed and that relations between the men and women in the trade improved. No woman in post in 1910 lost her job although, as in the past, many left work on marriage and were not replaced. But the coming of the war, with consequent loss of contracts, meant that the six-year embargo was prolonged. After the war, no further women were recruited, and Edinburgh book printing was gradually overtaken by English firms, in provincial centres such as Bungay and Frome. The comparatively few Edinburgh women compositors who had not married, plus some widows, continued to work out their time, the last of them retiring in the 1960s. The male monopoly on the compositor’s trade throughout Britain was reasserted for much of the twentieth century, being challenged only by the equal opportunities legislation of the 1970s. This change coincided furthermore with the computer revolution, which completely altered the nature of the printing trade and the position of the craft unions. The Edinburgh episode was an isolated one in Scottish book production, but it helps the historian to resist taking for granted an immutable sexual division of labour in the printing trade. Women were quite capable of handling this particular skill, and it was partly responsible for the survival of Edinburgh as a book-printing centre during the pre-1914 years. It does, however, illustrate a constant in labour history: the strategy by employers of using women to undercut pay rates, naturally provoking resistance from male trade unions. In a society where marriage and employment were regarded as alternatives for half the working-class population, but a combination for the other half, this gulf between the interests of the sexes remained too wide to be permanently bridged by special arrangements. Siân Reynolds

In Glasgow, Robert MacLehose & Co., as the university press, aimed to continue the excellent standards set by the Foulis brothers. Often in the twentieth century even the best of book printers worked to designs supplied by publishers, and in the 1930s MacLehose excellently printed books designed by Richard de la Mare of Faber & Faber; a particularly fine example is Siegfried Sassoon’s Memoirs of an Infantry O∞cer (1931), with illustrations by Barnett Freedman. It is a book that is worthy to be placed beside any of the works designed in London by Francis Meynell for the Nonesuch Press: the margins are generous; the readability of the lines of type is better than anything produced by the prestigious private Doves Press of T. J. Cobden-Sanderson and Emery

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Walker; the line drawings are tonally in harmony with the text; additionally there are four-colour lithographs and endpapers by Freedman and also the cloth of the case-binding is printed with four-colour lithographs. Freedman was an artist who had learned from the artistcraftsmen in printing companies. He was fortunate to learn by being able to draw directly onto lithographic stones or plates, but he also adapted his line drawings to enable them to be reproduced by letterpress line blocks. We can contrast this handsome illustrated book with the typographic simplicity of the pamphlet edition, with green wrappers and black wrap-round sheet, that Faber published of T. S. Eliot’s Burnt Norton in 1941; set in Perpetua typeface, MacLehose printed at least three impressions during 1941. In 1949 MacLehose printed for Chatto & Windus Merchantman Rearmed by Captain (or Sir) David William Bone with illustrations by Muirhead Bone, and there was a special edition of 160 signed copies bound in quarter morocco, top edge gilt. In 1931 MacLehose had printed, for the Porpoise Press, Captain Bone’s collection and discussion of sea shanties, Capstan Bars, illustrated by Freda Bone. As the 1940s moved into the 1950s, MacLehose were printing scientific and technical works, books published by Country Life Ltd and by Ginn & Co Ltd, educational publishers with o∞ces in London’s Bedford Row, and in the 1960s their imprint could be found on educational works published by Robert Gibson & Sons, once of Queen Street, Glasgow, but by then at 2 West Regent Street. Like R. & R. Clark and T. & A. Constable in Edinburgh, MacLehose did not make a satisfactory conversion from letterpress to lithography and eventually went out of business.

Changing technology A number of Scotland’s long-established companies that had survived the restrictions and shortages of the First World War renewed their plant in the 1920s and 1930s despite the di∞cult trading conditions created by economic depression and international tensions. The firm of Blackie & Son, for example, had been founded In Glasgow in 1809 and, since 1827, had occupied the Villafield works in the centre of the city. These were originally built in 1818 by the University Printer, Andrew Duncan, and had been purchased by Blackie on Duncan’s resignation from the university appointment. The premises had been much extended, but Blackie eventually outgrew them, and at the end of the 1920s, the firm moved to new buildings, built to their requirements, complete with a canteen and ‘other well designed amenities’,

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at Bishopbriggs, on the outskirts of Glasgow. The first department to move there was the bindery, at the end of 1928, and all production departments had transferred there by the middle of 1931, taking with them the Villafield Press name, and the works’ bell. A particular benefit was the design of the heating and power supply: [The] steam heating system was made to generate electric power as a by-product, thus obviating, except in summer, the need to use – and pay for – the public electricity supply. This was to prove a great blessing in the winters following the War, when electricity cuts were in operation. (Blackie 1959: 58) During the Second World War, printing work was again subject to disruption because of paper and manpower shortages. From 1940 part of the new factory was given over to munitions and other engineering work. Those employed in this work included a group from Blackie’s binding department. The firm ‘became one of the biggest amateur shell firms in Glasgow’: at the peak of its munitions’ production, 500 people were employed in this area, and 1,108,988 shells were produced (Blackie 1959: 60). Another Glasgow printing and publishing firm, William Collins & Son, had also embarked on a programme of renewing printing plant in the 1930s. Collins were originally established in 1819 at 28 Candleriggs Court in Glasgow, as a firm of printers and publishers, and had been based for many years in Herriot Hill (now Cathedral Street) in central Glasgow. William Hope Collins visited other printing firms in the United Kingdom, and in the United States of America in 1932, and following this, new presses and machines for binding were bought costing over £100,000. In addition, the firm’s works in Taylor Street were extended in 1936, and Eric Gill was commissioned to produce a new typeface for the firm, known as Fontana. Ultimately, the various buildings that constituted the publishing o∞ces and printing works at 144 Cathedral Street covered thirteen acres of floorspace, accommodating about 2,500 sta≠ in every aspect of book production (Keir: 262–3, 283). The decision to re-equip with expensive new machinery in the 1930s must have been questioned by some on the outbreak of the Second World War when shortages of trained personnel and materials (especially paper) again restricted output. However, such investment paid dividends in the immediate post-war period. Firms that had not updated their machinery pre-war were caught up in continuing post-war restrictions on imports of new machinery, and other raw materials, but needed to renew plant with as little delay as possible. However, those who had chosen, or had been forced to update plant before the war now found the going easier. As well as Collins, this was true for example, of the book and general printers,

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Culross of Coupar Angus, established in 1835, who had been forced to replace their printing plant in 1938, after a fire (they had also been forced to do this in 1916 after an earlier conflagration). Culross had therefore ‘already installed the most modern Monotype and letterpress plant available’ (Thomson 2000: 17). During the second half of the twentieth century, a number of significant and long-established Scottish firms, such as Collins, that had combined printing and publishing functions for many years, one by one shed their printing plant, partly to avoid further major investment; and for most firms the link between the publication of books and their physical production was lost. The need to re-invest in plant to keep up with external competitors also placed a strain on printing companies and represented a factor in their decline and consolidation during the same period. This is discussed at further length in the case study on the printing industry below. Helen Williams

Alongside Clarks and Constables in Edinburgh were the publishers who had tapped into the market created by the spread of literacy and the Education Act of 1870, and who were usually also printers with very large works. William and Robert Chambers were publishing by 1819 and Thomas Nelson & Sons moved into their first large works in 1843 and then in 1880, following a fire, into even larger premises. Nelson’s Royal Readers series, written by Thomas Nelson, were highly acclaimed in their day and millions of children all over the world learned to read with Chambers’ Radiant Way and Radiant Reading series. Oliver & Boyd, with a history going back to the beginning of the century, had by 1836 combined printing, binding and publishing on a large scale in one building. In Glasgow, Blackie & Son were founded in 1809 and William Collins in 1819; both companies were to have very large works to print the books that they published, the former on the northern edge of Bishopbriggs and the latter in Cathedral Street in the centre of Glasgow. These companies were well organised to produce good quality commercial book printing throughout the twentieth century but none produced books to equal the quality of those made by R. & R. Clark and T. & A. Constable. Not that Clarks were unaware of the demand for cheap editions of popular works, and for many years the company produced, in editions of hundreds of thousands, the Sixpenny Waverley series with bright paper covers, priced at 6d each. Following the wishes of Edward Clark, Robert’s son, who wished the company to remain in Edinburgh using its famous name and to be

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gifted to a suitable charitable body, R. & R. Clark passed in December 1946 to Edinburgh University. That situation survived until 1962 when the printing firm was sold to William Thyne (Holdings) Ltd; Thynes, carton printers, were owned by the Imperial Tobacco company. Following a management buy-out in 1979, R. & R. Clark and T. & A. Constable merged, and the closure of Clark-Constable in August 1986 was indeed the end of an era, as by that time within the company were what had been not only R. & R. Clark and T. & A. Constable but also Morrison & Gibb who had a history going back to 1837, with the name dating from 1879. In 1962 Nelsons became part of the Thomson Organisation and in 1968 the printing and binding divisions were merged with Morrison & Gibb. This company was acquired by the Oxley Printing Group and in 1981 by Clark-Constable. The great printing works of Thomas Nelson were consigned to rubble. The coming of photolithography to book printing had ended a great tradition of book making in Edinburgh. The Edinburgh book printers were closely associated with Hunter & Foulis Ltd, bookbinders, who had a history that began in 1857 when William Hunter set up William Hunter & Co. in Strichen’s Court, o≠ Edinburgh’s High Street. In 1925 Douglas A. Foulis took over the firm and in 1946 it was renamed Hunter & Foulis Ltd. The Foulis family, who ran the company, maintained high standards and Hunter & Foulis remained one of the largest publishers’ bookbinders in the UK despite, as the anonymous author of A Reputation for Excellence. A History of the Edinburgh Printing Industry, 1990, wrote, ‘the demise of the large printing houses in Edinburgh’ (18). In 1968 Hunter & Foulis took over the fine binding company of Henderson & Bisset who had bound some fine books including, unexpectedly, a work published by the small Serif Books: Agnes Mure Mackenzie’s Apprentice Majesty (1950), which was bound in canvas with title and design blocked in gold and ink on the spine. In 2001 Hunter & Foulis left Edinburgh for Haddington and are now part of the Montgomery Litho Group, with headquarters in Glasgow. In Scotland, Dunn & Wilson (from the 1980s Riley, Dunn & Wilson) of Falkirk, were the other large trade bookbinders and when they reduced their fine binding department, Tom Valentine, their head binder, set up his own very prestigious bindery in Larbert. The 1920s saw what has been termed a Scottish renaissance in literature that was led by C. M. Grieve (Hugh MacDiarmid). In the early 1920s Grieve was published by T. N. Foulis who created a typographic style that is still recognisable and, for some books that he published himself, Grieve used Foulis’ printers, The Edinburgh Press. The

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Porpoise Press (1922–39), was also part of that literary revival and, like Grieve, its active founders, Roderick Watson Kerr and George Malcolm Thomson, were part-time publishers with an interest in issuing new literary works. The first of the innovative Porpoise Broadsheets, published in December 1922, was printed by William Hodge Ltd who were publishers of the Notable Trials series. Although not eminent book printers, Hodge were not unadventurous publishers as their publication, in the 1940s and 1950s, of M. A. Michael’s translations of works by Hakon Mielche perhaps shows. In his The Porpoise Press 1922–39, Alistair McCleery quotes from a letter from Douglas Percy Bliss, designer and wood-engraver, o≠ering to help the Press ‘in matters of design and typography’, but Bliss received no reply. As McCleery wrote, ‘design was not the chief concern of the Porpoise’ (22). Typography was, however, important for a series of Porpoise Press fine editions of Scottish classics, aimed at collectors but not too expensive, beginning with poems by Robert Henryson and Robert Fergusson. Scots Poems by Fergusson was published in 1925 in Edinburgh ‘At the Porpoise Press, 4 Sta≠ord Street’ in an edition of 550 copies consecutively numbered. This imprint in a limited edition encouraged visitors to the single-room o∞ces of Porpoise to look for a printing press, but all printing was placed with commercial companies. Porpoise were never intended to be a private press in the manner of Kelmscott and they never did produce books to equal those of the Nonesuch Press that also did not print the books that Francis Meynell designed. The boards of Fergusson’s Scots Poems are covered in a pleasing blue paper and the front has a pasted-on title label; an agreeable typography uses an ‘old face’ type and there are decorative head pieces and a border to the title-page. The somewhat hard cream laid paper has deckle foot-edge and, to foster the idea of a fine edition, the foredges of the sheets have the appearance of having been left uncut to be opened by a purchaser. The printer was not Scottish but the ICI-owned Kynoch Press of Birmingham, run by Herbert Simon until he joined his brother Oliver in London at the more illustrious Curwen Press which, from the 1930s, competed, as did Cambridge University Press, with R. & R. Clark and T. & A. Constable for high-quality bookwork. The Porpoise Press were taken over by Faber & Faber in 1930 and they abandoned the imprint in 1939. Before Faber took over, Porpoise were encouraged by James Guthrie to publish collections of poetry in more expensive and aesthetically pleasing formats, but that came to nothing as did books on printing by Guthrie.

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The printing industry The period from 1880 to 1945 represented a period of relative expansion for the larger printers based in Edinburgh such as Morrison & Gibb or in Glasgow Robert MacLehose. For printers in the smaller towns of Scotland it represented decline and marginality – or relocation in the case of MacLehose who had moved from a small-scale business in Ayr to an industrial plant in Glasgow on taking over the business of George Richardson. However, much of the expansion marked in the two major cities was as a result of this form of amalgamation and consolidation. Morrison & Gibb, for example, merged with Scott & Fergusson in 1896, with W. & A. K. Johnston in 1931, and Mould & Tod in 1932. In order to accommodate this expansion, the company built a new factory on a two-acre site at Tanfield where all the stages of production from composition to binding could be carried out under one roof, as at Nelson’s Parkside works. This positive aspect of consolidation was replaced by a more negative one after 1945 when mergers became an index of the weakness of the industry in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and an uneasy alternative to one or other of the partners going bankrupt. Continuing poor industrial relations, coming to the boil for example in the strike by all the Scottish print unions in the summer of 1959, coupled with lack of capital investment to replace machines bought in the earlier period of expansion but now obsolete, undermined the health of the industry in Scotland. In 1968 Morrison & Gibb took over the production activities, but not the premises, of Thomas Nelson & Sons before themselves being taken over by the Oxley Group and then by Clark Constable in 1981 to create a Frankenstein conglomerate of remnants of all the great names of Edinburgh printing that had thrived for nearly two centuries. In Glasgow the production works of Collins employed almost 2,000 people at the beginning of this period. Blackie & Son developed a greenfield site at Bishopbriggs and had transferred all their production there by the end of the 1920s. When Blackie gave up printing to concentrate on publishing in 1966, the works was sold to Collins who then expanded it in 1976, with a large and sophisticated warehouse operation, to hold all its production facilities. Two Cameron belt presses were installed to create the most advanced paperback-making operation in the world. The volume of books that could be produced was too large for Collins’ own Fontana imprint and the company began acquisition of other paperback houses such as Panther in order to feed these presses. In the 1980s the company was producing 48 million books a year with a workforce of over 2,000; in the early 1990s it was producing 81 million books with a workforce of 750. Despite this increased, technology-driven productivity, Collins, by now

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HarperCollins and a subsidiary of News Corp, decided like Blackies before it to concentrate on publishing and sold o≠ its production facilities in toto. Robert MacLehose, appointed University Printer in 1892, too expanded and in 1904 built a community at Anniesland to house its employees as it completed a move to the then outskirts of Glasgow, distant from its usual sources of skilled labour. MacLehose lasted until the 1970s as an independent company, having over its centenary produced books for many of the most notable London-based publishers, particularly Faber & Faber, before they too succumbed to merger and consolidation like its peers in the East of Scotland. Local loyalties in greater Glasgow underpinned the growth of local newspapers; John Cossar produced the Govan Press, Clydeside Press and Renfrew Press for over 100 years from 1878, using a flatbed web-fed printing machine developed within the company. This sense of serving a local community with which it had strong connections was a double-edged sword, bringing both stability and vulnerability depending on the decisions of the technocrats in charge of urban redevelopment from the 1960s onwards. Aberdeen University Press (AUP) had been registered as a limited company in 1900. Despite its name, it had no formal connection with Aberdeen University and it was primarily a printing company. In Aberdeen too, a familiar pattern was followed as AUP expanded by acquiring and merging with other city-based companies: the Rosemount Press fell in 1932; William Jackson, bookbinders, lost its independence in 1949; John Avery & Company was taken over in 1953; Edmund & Spark, the oldest printing firm in Aberdeen, was absorbed in 1966. By 1970 perhaps half of their business came from the production of books and journals, chiefly educational in nature, and the other half from jobbing printing. In that same year AUP was itself taken over by the British Bank of Commerce. Under the new ownership, AUP absorbed Central Press and G. Cornwall & Sons with its subsidiary, the White Heather Publishing Company. AUP moved from a primarily printing enterprise to one also undertaking original academic publishing it was bought by Robert Maxwell’s Pergamon Press group in 1978. Maxwell divorced printing from the successful and expanding publishing in 1989 when the former became part of BPCC (British Printing and Communications Corporation) and the latter remained within the Maxwell Communications Corporation. BPCC seemed fortunate in escaping from Maxwell’s grip through a management buy-out but it too could not avoid the economic logic of the time and went through several mergers before forming the Polestar Group in 1998. The sad coda to this pattern was Polestar’s decision in 2003 to close down its Aberdeen operations and transfer the business to other plants in England.

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It seems in retrospect an inexorable pattern: buccaneering expansion through the swallowing-up of smaller firms at a time from 1880 to 1945 when demand for print was at an all-time high; then further consolidation and merger in the post-war period in an attempt to cope with decline generated not through a slackening in demand but by overseas competition and failure to reinvest in the new technologies of print production. Alistair McCleery

In the post-1945 years Scottish publishing gradually retreated into being largely concerned with reference books and books for the educational market, with Chambers and Collins successful in both areas, but at that time one did not look to school books for interesting typography. Specialised companies such as McDougall’s Educational Co. in Edinburgh, the Grant Educational Co. and Robert Gibson & Sons in Glasgow were equally successful in achieving large sales to schools, with Gibson’s First Aid in English series touching sales of perhaps four million copies and still selling. Many of Gibson’s books were printed in Glasgow by Bell & Bain who maintained, as they still do, a good

Figure 2.16 Machine Printing at Nelsons.

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commercial standard of printing. Gibsons remained a family-owned firm until 2002 when they became Hodder Gibson, based in Paisley, part of Hodder Education, who are part of Hodder Headline. McDougalls became Holmes-McDougall who were part of Sir Hugh Fraser’s Scottish Universal Investments (SUITS). SUITS became part of the Lonrho group and Holmes-McDougall were sold to Collins who became part of HarperCollins, owned by the mighty media group headed by Rupert Murdoch. The library side of W. & R. Holmes evolved into the Albany Book Co. who, in 1993, was to invest in Canongate, publishers, and there we may leave, uncompleted, these examples of buy-outs and mergers that have changed the face of publishing worldwide. In the 1940s, William Maclellan, who owned a general printing company in Hope Street, Glasgow, began to publish and print an impressive range of literary and art books, with the Poetry Scotland series making available work by a significant number of new Scottish poets. The series, which was published in boards with a cloth spine and glossy paper, had a recognisable tall format and sometimes interesting frontispieces, but the presswork is not distinguished, although the inexpensive paper has proved to be more durable than that used for many of today’s yellowing paperbacks. In 1955 Maclellans did attempt to produce a fine limited edition of Hugh MacDiarmid’s In Memoriam James Joyce with decorations by John Duncan Fergusson, and whilst the typesetting and presswork are not of the highest quality, few other Scottish publishers did better at that time. In 1962 T. & A. Constable printed to a good standard Hugh MacDiarmid: A Festschrift edited by K. D. Duval and Sydney Goodsir Smith and published in Rose Street, Edinburgh, by K. D. Duval. This is certainly a good-looking case-bound book with blue woven cloth, but Duval was to be involved in the publication of three volumes which rank with the superb quarto edition of Thomas Gray’s Poems printed in 1768 by Foulis in Wilson’s Double Pica roman. In 1961 Duvals published from Edinburgh a limited signed and numbered edition of MacDiarmid’s The Kind of Poetry I Want which was printed by Giovanni Mardersteig on the hand-press of the O∞cina Bodoni in Verona; and in 1969 Kulgin Duval and Colin H. Hamilton published from Falkland in Fife a new limited edition of MacDiarmid’s long poem, A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, illustrated with eight woodcuts by Frans Masereel and printed in Dante type, again by Giovanni Mardersteig. Alongside these exceptionally fine books can be placed MacDiarmid’s Direadh I, II and III which was published in 1974 by Kulgin Duval and Colin H. Hamilton from Fenich, Foss, in a limited

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numbered and signed edition designed by Martino Mardersteig, and printed at the Stamperia Valdonega, Verona. During the second half of the twentieth century the most consistent Scottish publisher of well-designed and well-printed books was Edinburgh University Press when it was directed by Archie Turnbull, who appointed George Mackie as typographic consultant. Turnbull was a fastidious editor and Mackie, who began as an illustrator, designed not only subtly decorative books of poetry but also plain but typographically complicated technical books. Archie Turnbull’s own anonymously published Edinburgh and its College Printers (1973) printed by T. & A. Constable in Fournier type on Basingwerk Parchment paper from the long-established but now defunct Grosvenor Chater & Co. Ltd, is a typical example of the mainstream work of Turnbull and Mackie. Ballatis of Luve, edited by John MacQueen (1971) shows how poems can be printed without dated indentations and the title-page is rich in subtle word and line space. The Collected Poems of George Bruce (1971) shows Mackie’s attention to the details of typesetting and the use of good Grosvenor Chater coloured paper as part dividers; the printing is by W. & J. Mackay & Co. Ltd of Chatham. An additional pleasure in handling this book is the drawing by Mackie for the book-jacket. Edwin Morgan’s The Second Life (1968) is visually a very interesting book and it also has the distinction, for 1968, of being computer typeset in 12pt Scotch Roman by R. & R. Clark using the Monotype Corporation’s equipment and ICT1900 computer. An earlier EUP publication, Edinburgh in the Age of Reason (1967) is a very well made case-bound book with very large, although well-proportioned, margins. The design looks a little pretentious to be by Mackie, but the printing by Robert Cunningham & Sons Ltd, of Alva, shows that the Edinburgh book printers had some competition in Scotland beyond MacLehose in Glasgow. The Edinburgh printers had no commercial competition in Aberdeen but Aberdeen University Press had been founded in 1840 and in recent years, under the direction of Colin MacLean, made a valuable contribution to Scottish culture, not least in proving what few supposedly Scottish wise-heads believed – that there was a large market for well-designed and printed dictionaries of the Scots language. Robert Maxwell acquired the press and his end meant the end also of the Maxwell Macmillan Publishing Corporation, to which the Aberdeen University Press Ltd (Publishers) belonged. The 1950s and 1960s saw the emergence of a group of small publishers who tended to have similar aims to the earlier Porpoise Press. The way was lead by Callum Macdonald who began printing in 1951 and

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publishing in 1953. Macdonald taught himself and his family to typeset and print in the basement of his newsagent’s shop in Marchmont, Edinburgh. Later Macdonald employed members of the printing trade unions and so his family ceased setting and printing, but the standards he had established were maintained as the printing company grew larger and larger, with its last premises in Loanhead, Midlothian. The books printed and published by Macdonald are of major importance to Scottish literature but they are also examples of what can be achieved when a publisher regards no detail of editing, typesetting and printing as unimportant. Akros Publications, which I founded in 1965, had the same aims as Callum Macdonald, namely to print new literary works, especially poetry, and the Times Literary Supplement (12 February 1970) suggested in its editorial ‘Commentary’, ‘If anyone wants an example of what the little presses can do for literature he should study Duncan Glen’s A Small Press and Hugh MacDiarmid.’ Early works published by Akros Publications, run, like Porpoise and Macdonald, on a part-time basis, included poems by MacDiarmid in pamphlets that were handtypeset and hand-printed. The production of Akros books has been mostly confined by cost to trade typesetting and small printers who showed that they could produce a reasonable standard of work when given exact specifications and careful quality control. What is clear, however, is that good typographic design was easier to achieve than good quality presswork. One example of the two coming together was Thomas Rae’s 1967 printing for Akros Publications of a limited, numbered and signed edition of Poems Addressed to Hugh MacDiarmid, with portrait line drawings of MacDiarmid by Leonard Penrice, which is quarter bound in leather, the boards covered in hand-made Japanese paper printed with line drawings of roses by Penrice. As an editor with Oliver & Boyd, in Tweeddale Court, o≠ Edinburgh’s High Street, Robin Lorimer was another perfectionist who knew that, to quote Hans Schmoller of Penguin Books, he had to ‘harden his heart against the accusation of being too fussy’. When he established his own publishing imprint, Southside, Lorimer applied this to editing, typographic design and production. Alongside the many smaller part-time and non-commercial publishers who did not aim to make profits and who subsidised their books by not taking salaries, represented here by Macdonald, Akros Publications and Southside, the 1970s saw medium-sized companies established, including Canongate and Mainstream, which are run as full-time commercial concerns that maintain a good standard of commercial book design and aim to publish more expensive productions when opportunities arise for

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these. More recently, to limit what could be an extensive list to three representative imprints, Luath Press, Mercat Press and John Tuckwell have contributed to this revival of general publishing in Scotland. These and other imprints have recognised the importance of good typesetting and of book design in general, and even a casual examination of their books reveals the revolution in typographic standards that has taken place since the 1960s. Today’s Scottish publishers are fortunate that they can commission designers who have been professionally educated to have not only an appreciation of the aesthetics of a good book, but to be able to think analytically as they use Apple Macintoshs and QuarkXpress. In looking at well-designed books of recent years, the names of freelance designers are often seen: there are Dalrymple (see, for example, his work for the National Galleries of Scotland) and Mark Blackadder (see, for example, his design for the collection of poems, Time’s Traverse by Gordon Jarvie, published by the small Harpercroft). The excellent square format of the pocketbooks series, published as we entered the twenty-first century, is eye-catching and the typographic design conforms to all good practices whilst looking of the twenty-first century. The series was edited by Alec Finlay, who worked with Lucy Richards on the design concept, and published by Finlay’s Morning Star Publications in association with Polygon, once owned by Edinburgh University Press but now an imprint of the increasingly successful and expansive Birlinn that Hugh Andrew established in 1992. These pocketbooks, and many of the works recently designed and published, if not always typeset and printed, in Scotland, illustrate that, unlike creative authors who can veer to useful egocentricity, designers of books have mostly accepted that, as expounded in 1935 by Stanley Morison in his classic, First Principles of Typography: Typography is the e∞cient means to an essentially utilitarian and only accidentally aesthetic end, for the enjoyment of patterns is rarely the reader’s chief aim. Therefore, any disposition of printing material which, whatever the intention, has the e≠ect of coming between author and reader is wrong. (5)

Design and Illustration Rosemary Addison Introduction Illustrations, designs and cartoons are simply words for drawings. The National Library of Scotland rare book website lists nearly two hundred nineteenth and twentieth-century illustrators who practised in Scotland. But there were many other artists who learned how to draw and design (Harris and Halsby 1990; Houfe 1981). A Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women (2006) accounts for a number of women illustrators in the history of printing and publishing and demonstrates the shared history of artists, writers and workers in the industries. Siân Reynolds has shown the extent of employment in the typesetting trades by 1911 (1989: 13). Further information about Scottish design can also be found in Scottish Art (Macdonald 2000) as well as Scottish Art 1460–1990 (Macmillan 1990) and Scottish Art in the 20th Century (Macmillan 1994) explaining key aspects of national developments. Tom Normand outlines the subject of Scottish photography and the book in this volume.

Victorians Johanna Drucker has argued that nineteenth-century marketing stimulated consumption of luxury items like artist’s books (livres d’artistes) particularly in dominant European art circles in Paris: The livre d’artiste took advantage of the expanded market for visual art which had grown in the 19th century, along with other luxury markets expanded by industrial growth, the accumulation of capital and an educated upper middle class with an appetite for fine consumer goods. (1995: 3) 148

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Artists and publishers in Scotland visited transatlantic and continental markets to exchange and develop their ideas. Evidence from International Exhibitions of Industry Science and Art in Edinburgh and Glasgow indicate that selling books, displaying bookbindings, in particular of bible translations into Gaelic or African tribal languages, and showing fine art illustrations reinforced patterns of visual art and book consumption. This might bear out Drucker’s thesis. But books could be more than consumer luxuries. They could be necessities. Mass production of multiple copies of books made them cheaper. Even if lawyers, theologians, doctors and academics required books for research purposes, those with little accumulated capital and no wealth wanted to read and enjoy books. They too needed books, of work and information. Following the Education Act (1872), although aristocrats, professionals, connoisseurs and collectors could appreciate sublime forms of book production – artists’ books, small-run private press editions and unique illuminated manuscripts – publishers produced longer runs of mass market publications often making a feature of the fact that their books contained work by well-known artists, catering for growing cohorts of male and female readers. Art and bookwork featured in contemporary Victorian periodicals such as Life and Work (1884≠.), James Mavor’s Scottish Art Journal (1888–9) and the Scots Pictorial (1897≠.), as well as in the constant commentaries of Blackwoods and Chambers magazines. The Congress of the National Association for the Advancement of Arts and its Application to Industry held in Edinburgh in 1889 (Bowe and Cumming 1998: 18–19) discussed book design and production. Encyclopaedia Britannica continued to be a significant Scottish employer; biblewomen took and sold Nelson’s bibles to households in Scotland; philanthropists encouraged potato pickers to read (Holmes 2005); organisations such as the Edinburgh Social Union (1886) and the Kyrle Society generated opportunities for education in and around Scotland for those beyond primary school age; and su≠ragists wished to widen access to art and literature. So Victorians promoted art and literature as a matter of social justice and political reform beyond the limits of middle-class leadership. Ruskin repeatedly condemned the quality of mass-market products compared to fine-art design and yet his complaints served to stress the social gulf between classes rather than the purely aesthetic di≠erences between hand-crafted and manufactured books. Scottish printers and publishers created and responded to expanding markets. Victorian book design and illustrating grew exponentially, as Ruari McLean pointed out, ‘The Victorian period was one of rapid change, of fertile invention, and of enormous vitality, all of which is reflected in its

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Figure 2.17 Cover of Edinburgh Typographia 1898–9.

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books’ (1963: 5). Duncan Glen has already pointed out that Scottish publishing and Scottish printing interests were not altogether separate. The Edinburgh branch of British Typographia brought together Victorian printers and publishers interested in book production. Members subscribed to printing journals, made a printing library, had a programme of lectures and invited papers on aspects of printing and typography. Publishers or printers controlled agreed formats, typography, make-up and bindings with in-house sta≠ and skilled craft workers known to their companies from printing chapels. Senefelder’s lithographic printing methods a≠ected traditional engraving and block-making for books. Typesetting methods from cast typeface handsetting, to linotype setting and the use of plates altered book-making methods. Industrial photographic reproduction altered possibilities as to what could be printed. In the Victorian era illustration and design involved negotiating stages of work with artists mainly working independently as freelancers. Artists provided figurative, narrative or non-figurative, decorative material in draft and in final stages for books. The additional element of ‘art’ for books involved new streams of sta≠ qualified as artists (McLean 1963). By the end of the nineteenth century artists who trained at recognised schools and who exhibited in public were most likely to receive commissions from Scottish printers and publishers. Developments in further and higher education in art schools, mechanics’ institutes, universities and in a range of philanthropic and religious organisations meant that male and female artists trained to produce etchings and illustrations suitable for books.

Edinburgh: Arts and Crafts, Symbolism and the Celtic Revival Arts and crafts practices, the revival of medieval crafts applied to handmade objects, as well the fascination of nature, symbolism and Celtic symbolism bore on the design of publications in Scotland, in particular among those from Geddes & Colleagues. Patrick Geddes (1854–1932) and his wife Anna Morton founded the Edinburgh Social Union in 1885 with other active citizens, including educationalists Flora Stevenson and Mary Burton; Scotsman editor John Findlay and his daughters; printing manager and organiser of night classes for Constable’s employees Walter B. Blaikie; as well as artists like William Hole, David Vallance and Phoebe Traquair. As a botany tutor at Heriot-Watt College, ‘A College for the People’, in 1886 Geddes wished to improve city housing, to bring about civic and social progress and facilitate educational opportunities. By publishing Geddes’ Industrial Exhibitions and Modern Progress

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(1887) David Douglas helped Geddes as well as the ‘modernising’ and progressive ideals of the Edinburgh Social Union members. Douglas, though overlooked, played a significant role in Scottish publishing in his own right. Between 1877 and his death in 1899 he collaborated with T. N. Foulis as a bookseller (Elphick and Harris 1998). And from 1884, under his editorship of Life and Work, he enlisted artists like Aberdonian James Cadenhead (1858–1957) and illustrator Hannah C. P. MacGoun (1864–1913) to contribute to this regular Church of Scotland bulletin: issues acknowledged artists as well as engravers who prepared their blocks. Life and Work printed articles related to female su≠rage and gave some opportunities to women illustrators and writers. It reviewed and advertised contemporary books from Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier who also commissioned female artists to illustrate their publications, promoting women writers such as Annie and Maggie Swan, Robina Hardy and Ellinor Davenport Adams. Douglas forged international links, producing a series of novels written by American authors, and engaged Elizabeth Gulland (1857–1934) to design covers for them. As a freelance artist with her own studio in Edinburgh, Gulland had trained at the Trustees’ Academy, designed the 1886 Exhibition Catalogue for Queen Victoria’s visit and now designed covers for this early series of paperback novels, copies of which sold at the Edinburgh International Exhibition of 1886 where Douglas also underwrote the cost of production of the Women’s Industries Section Catalogue. In 1891 artist James Lawton Wingate (1846–1924) asked if art classes could be held in the Outlook Tower at the top of Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, which Geddes acquired. By 1895 artists working in the arts and crafts manner, Charles Mackie (1862–1920) and symbolist John Duncan (1866–1945) (Kemplay 1994) taught in art classes and summer schools on the premises. One outcome of Geddes’ work to regenerate and establish activity in art and design was a publishing house and imprint, ‘Geddes & Colleagues’, whose works were printed by W. H. White of the Riverside Press in Edinburgh, although Constables printed and bound Geddes’ journal The Evergreen. In Part I of The Evergreen, Geddes himself wrote an article ‘The Scots Renascence’ referring to one of many Scottish cultural rebirths. As editor of The Evergreen, William Sharp orchestrated articles of his own, of his alter ego Fiona Macleod and gathered features from his wife and friends as well as Charles Saroléa (later an editor of the French ‘Collection Nelson’), Gaelic scholar Alexander Carmichael and others. He included articles and drawings from W. G. Burn-Murdoch and Pittendrigh MacGillivray, as well as drawings from Robert Burns, James Cadenhead, John Duncan, Helen Hay, C. H. Mackie, Paul

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Serusier and William Walls. A leather-bound design of The Evergreen designed by Charles Mackie is only one example of work from the Geddes’ circle. Walter Crane reproduced two of the illustrations from The Evergreen in The Decorative Illustration of Books (1896), and was able to observe the quality of Edinburgh printing, pointing out, ‘We have had good work from the Edinburgh houses, from Messrs R. and R. Clark, and Messrs. Constable . . . ’ (155)

Phoebe Traquair and ‘Edinburgh binding’ Phoebe Traquair (1852–1936), née Moss, born and trained in Dublin, was an artist who had a special a∞nity with books and book design. Married to a Scottish palaeontologist, she settled with him in Edinburgh in 1873. She bequeathed a copy of an illuminated manuscript, a paradigm of an artists’ book, The Psalms of David which she had worked on from 1872 to 1896 to the National Galleries of Scotland while others bound by the Doves Press are also held in the National Library of Scotland. Traquair made Psalms in the arts and crafts manner, incorporating pre-Raphaelite cartouches in coloured inks and gold leaf on the vellum pages; Jane Easton of Constable’s bindery gathered together and forwarded the pages which were given red and white silk head and tail bands and a red silk ribbon marker; and John Talbot, a silversmith teaching at Edinburgh Social Union classes, made a silver clasp for the book. As in Continental religious orders, Traquair continued a tradition of illuminating manuscripts as a matter of piety and selfsacrificial dedication to the cause of art and beauty in intensely personal narratives. While William Morris revived illuminated works, he displaced their religious tenor with a reforming aesthetic and socialist political ideology. Traquair worked traditionally to show the depth of aesthetic emotions in religious experience, using the sensuality of words, music and the tactile qualities of the materials expressed by the auratic quality of Psalms in particular. Traquair produced a range of other designs, contributing diagrammatic illustrations to a limited edition of Rev. Black’s translation of Dante (1890). She designed a cloth binding design for Elizabeth Sharp’s Women’s Voices (1887) published by Walter Scott. And after the commercial success of editions of poems by Robert Burns in the 1880s T. C. & E. C. Jack subsequently promoted their ‘Told to the Children’ series as illustrated by ‘Well Known Artists’. Their series included Traquair’s images for Mary Macgregor’s Stories of Three Saints (1907) as well as work from artists like Katharine Cameron. Traquair also designed artwork for the Rev. David Balsillies’ short-lived editions of popular

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literature The Children’s Guide (1890) and The Ladder (1891) printed by Constables before the first editions of William Morris’ ‘little experiment’ of the Kelmscott Press in 1891. Together with Annie Macdonald, Jessie MacGibbon and others at Edinburgh Social Union classes, Traquair devised ‘Edinburgh’ bindings; W. B. Blaikie mediated between the designers and binders at Constable’s, such as Jane Easton, to produce books exhibited by Karslake for the Guild of Women Binders and the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society in 1898 (Tidcombe 1996).

Social realists Social realist painters in Scotland wished to show ordinary people living ordinary lives, much in the manner of Dutch painters like Hubert von Herkomer or painters in France like Bastien Lepage working in the open air (‘en plein air’) instead of in studios. They presented narratives of working people to display the social reality of labour and to record the preoccupations of Victorian philanthropists. If photographs captured landscape and portraits more faithfully and more realistically than before, then Mrs Janet Stewart Smith (1839–1925) relied on her ‘pen, pencil and camera’ to illustrate The Grange of St Giles printed by Constables in 1898. Hannah Clarke Preston MacGoun (1864–1913) attended the Edinburgh Trustees’ Academy, was taught by Robert McGregor (1847–1922) who had illustrated books for Nelsons. Like him, she worked in a social realist vein, initially for Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier (see Ellinor Davenport Adams, Little Miss Conceit (1896)) before T. N. Foulis commissioned her to illustrate an edition of William MacGillivray’s Rob Lindsay and His School (1905) as the first of many popular works of her design. Her rapid sketches and cartoons of country folk and the ‘Kailyard’ – a legitimate Scottish subject rather than a dismissive term for sentimental Scottish works – and the close studies of people she knew, reflected a continuing life interest portraiture (Daiches: 169–70). MacGoun’s work was produced from a studio in George Street, and when not illustrating books she would paint portraits (including one of Thomas Nelson’s daughter Elsie). Artists illustrating in the social realist vein continued to do so, well into the following century until photography displaced the need for narrative and naturalistic design and illustration.

Glasgow: boys, girls, spooks and Glasgow style Victorian Scottish figures of authority described male and female workers as ‘boys’ and ‘girls’. In Glasgow Boys Roger Bilcli≠e (1985) applied

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the generic terms to painters mainly in the West of Scotland who established an identity separate from the academic painting schools of the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh. The ‘Boys’ admired Whistler’s work, made engravings and etchings, were interested in the graphic styles of Japanese prints; travelled extensively to and from the Continent – in Austria, France, Germany and Holland in particular – witnessed the developments in art nouveau, De Stijl, Jugendstil; and read periodicals such as The Studio (1893≠.) and The Yellow Book (1894≠.). The Glasgow Girls (Burkhauser) exhibitions and writers responded to perceptions that art and design in Scotland was only produced by men such as Joseph Crawhall (1861–1913), James Guthrie (1859–1939), Edward Walton (1860–1922) and other like-minded artists (Halsby). Members of the Blackie family took part on the board of Glasgow School of Art and generated practical and financial opportunities for students of illustration as well as for their own publishing businesses. John Blackie commissioned work from artists he knew. The progressive arts and crafts policy at Glasgow School of Art implemented by Fra Newbery (1855–1946) and his wife Jessie Rowat (1864–1948) supported a network of creative activity. ‘The Four’ – Frances Macintosh, Herbert McNair, Margaret Macintosh and Charles Rennie Mackintosh – were dubbed the ‘Spook School’ by a contemporary critic, Gleeson White, who found their designs ghostly and ghoulish. Their use of line and form, to some a ‘Scotto-art nouveau’ style, to others Celtic symbolist graphics, was in e≠ect entirely new. Both Glasgow Boys and Glasgow Girls generated new visual dynamism. Agnes and Lucy Raeburn’s issues of The Magazine (1893–7), made by hand in-house at Glasgow School of Art, included photographs by James Craig Annan and work by Katharine Cameron and her brother, etcher and later president of the Royal Scottish Academy, David Young Cameron. Katharine Cameron designed book covers and illustrations for publishers. Those who attended the Glasgow School of Art made ‘Glasgow’ style a distinct art form. Of the many illustrators such as Annie French (1872–1965) from the Glasgow School of Art, Agnes Miller Parker (1895–1980), deserves fuller mention.

Agnes Miller Parker (1895–1980) Agnes Miller Parker was a prolific Scottish book illustrator and engraver. Her work appeared in private press livres d’artistes printed at Gregynog press in the 1930s; in a range of publications for Scottish and English publishers; and in advertising. Miller Parker’s designs enlivened the post-war book market of

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Figure 2.18 Agnes Miller Parker illustrations from H. E. Bates’ Travels through the Woods: The English Woodlands – April to April, Gollancz, 1936.

limited editions and multiples following rights negotiations between the Oxford (OUP) and Cambridge University Presses (CUP); and the American Limited Editions Club (LEC) (print runs of 1,500) and Heritage Book Club (HBC) (more popular printed editions of 10,000 and more). George Macy, who owned these clubs, contacted Miller Parker personally after acquiring the Nonesuch Press (1935) in order to commission further artwork from her. His LEC and HBC editions of, for example, Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1946), Far from the Madding Crowd (1958), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1964) and Jude the Obscure (1969); or Shakespeare’s Tragedies (1959) and Poems (1967) gave Miller Parker international recognition. Agnes was the eldest of the eight children of Agnes Harriet Mitchell and William McCall Parker. She was born in Irvine and attended Whitehill Higher Grade School in Glasgow. Entering Glasgow School of Art in 1911 she gained her diploma in 1916 and tutored there until 1920. She married fellow student William McCance in 1918 (separating in 1955 with the marriage formally dissolved 1963). Hugh MacDiarmid referred to them as Scottish Modernist artists in the Scottish Educational Review while James Whyte of The Modern Scot wrote that their work was part of an essentially Scottish movement.

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Moving to Earl’s Court in London in 1920, Miller Parker taught art at Maltman’s Green School, Gerard’s Cross (1920–8) and at Clapham High School (1928–30). Together Miller Parker and McCance attended socialist meetings and met other artists of like mind; renting a room to Londonbased Vorticist, William Roberts; befriending sculptor Eric Kennington; exhibiting with members of the Chiswick Colony, Gertrude Hermes and Blair Hughes Stanton in St George’s Gallery in 1928; and taking holidays at ‘Pounds Scots’ a country cottage at Bledlow Ridge in Berkshire with Naomi and ‘Dick’ Mitchison and Marjory and Dominick Spring-Rice. Miller Parker learned engraving informally from Gertrude Hermes and maintained a lifelong friendship with Naomi Mitchison. Miller Parker received the Walter Brewster Prize for Engraving at the First International Exhibition of Engraving and Lithography in Chicago in 1930, by which time she had also made linocuts for Rhoda Power’s book How it Happened: Myths and Folk Tales published by CUP. In October the same year, when her husband became controller of Gregynog Press, at Tregynon in Powys, she went with him to join Blair Hughes Stanton, director of Gregynog and his wife Gertrude Hermes. Over the following three years Miller Parker made thirty-seven engravings to match McCance’s illuminated initials for The Fables of Aesope and also engraved illustrations for XXI Welsh Gypsy Folk Tales by John Sampson (1933). She also negotiated commissions from the Golden Cockerell Press: Rhys Davies’ Daisy Matthews and Three Other Tales (1932); H. E. Bates’ The House with the Apricot (1933); from OUP: Kenneth Muir’s The Nettle and the Flower (1933); from Nonesuch Press: Minnow among the Titans; Letters to Thomas Poole and Gulliver’s Travels (1934); and from Jonathan Cape: Adrien le Corbeau’s – translated by J. H. Ross, pseudonym for T. E. Lawrence – The Forest Giant (1934); as well as Cape’s editions of Best Poems for 1935 and 1936. Transitions from making linocuts for CUP and working for Gregynog Press, designing for small presses and then for Victor Gollancz – H. E. Bates’ Through the Woods (1936) and Down the River (1937) – show how Miller Parker’s designs adapted to a commercial market. She produced illustrations and engravings according to the commissions she received from di≠erent kinds of publishers and for public and government advertising during the Second World War. She did not write rhetorically of international or national politics but instead commented on each piece of her work at a practical, professional and personal level. She was surprised at the disparity between the amount of e≠ort put into arranging commissions and the amounts ultimately paid for them, writing to a valued friend, admirer and purchaser of some of her engravings, Philip Gibbons, in 1934:

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edinburgh history of the book in scotland I have been very busy . . . but don’t seem to have made much money in spite of all my e≠orts . . . Small freelance jobs don’t really pay. So much time is lost in preliminary negotiations sometimes as much as in starting the book. Then there is the sending backwards and forwards of sketches, also a great time-stealer . . .1

Even so, the workflow continued and included Hockley Clarke’s Country Commentary published by Allman & Son in London (1940) and Harrap’s edition of A Shropshire Lad (1940) printed in Edinburgh by R. & R. Clark. Lutterworth Press commissioned illustrations for Richard Je≠eries’ The Spring of the Year (1946), The Life of the Fields (1947) and The Old House at Coote (1948), William Maclellan of Glasgow published The Gold Torque: A Story of Galloway in Early Christian Times (1951), she illustrated a copy of The Compleat Angler published by the London o∞ce of Nelsons, but printed in Edinburgh in 1954, and The Faerie Queene (1950) for OUP printed for a LEC edition in 1953. Subsequently a CUP edition of Shakespeare’s Tragedies (1957) became LEC and HBC editions. Researching prodigiously at the Mitchell Library, to produce blocks at a rate of one every ten days, she was aware for Macbeth, that, ‘being a Scot I’m biased and want something . . . stark and primitive’.2 At this time she expressed her view of the book illustrator: My feeling for books is firstly that the artist comes in after the typographer as embellisher and decorator and has a minor place which he cannot or ought not overstep. To me it would be an impertinence for the artist-illustrator to try to compete with the author.3 This self-e≠acing tone shows Miller Parker’s approach to book illustration. Her personality did not override her work and she was anxious to marry appropriate illustrations with the given texts. Returning to Scotland in 1955 she settled eventually on Arran in 1958 where she built ‘Cladach’ (a Gaelic word for ‘shore’). She died in Greenock in 1975. Rosemary Addison

Jessie King (1878–1949) Jessie King’s protean work derived from her studies at Glasgow School of Art (1892–7). She joined the teaching sta≠ of the Department of Book Decoration and Design run by John Macbeth in 1899. Some of her works are in the Robin de Beaumont collection, and Colin White her biographer 1 2 3

13 Dec 1934: NAL 86 ZZ 62 8 Feb 1958: NAL 86.ZZ.62 29 Oct 1957: NAL 86.ZZ.62

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has compiled a bibliography of her extensive book work (White: 145–59). She features in Marianne Tidcombe’s Women Bookbinders (87) for her hand-bound edition of Ballads, by Rossetti; for designs for Wertheim’s Department Store in Germany published by Globus; for Maclehose of Glasgow and Chivers Vellucent bindings of The Story of Rosalynde and The High History of the Holy Grail. But in fact she worked for many publishers and printers including Gowans & Gray, T. N. Foulis, Nelsons and William Collins as well as running art classes with her husband A. E. Taylor at the Shealing Atelier in Paris. King helped other female illustrators, in particular Cecile Walton and Wendy Wood, to develop their own graphic styles in black and white. Awarded a gold medal for book design at the Turin International Exhibition of Modern Decorative Art in 1902, King was one of the contributors to ‘Scottish’ and ‘Glasgow Style’ there and thereafter.

Talwin Morris (1865–1911) and the Blackie bindings Talwin Morris was one of a cluster of artists commissioned to design bindings for Blackie & Son in Glasgow. Morris’ first commission was for a series of Red Letter Books, but thereafter Morris’ designs appear in a range of Blackie books and endpapers. Louise Fletcher has noted how Morris supplied the company with an imprint for a corporate identity. More can be learned about Morris and his wife, who also illustrated books, from a number of commentators (Cinamon 1987; MacSporran 1997) and the University of Michigan runs a particularly informative website.

Edwardians to the Second World War The company of T. N. Foulis (1874–1943) employed an in-house editor Joseph Simpson (1879–1939) who enlisted the expertise of freelance artists including Katharine Cameron, Hannah McGoun and Jessie King to illustrate a significant number of their books. Artists who worked for the company benefited both from being paid and from selling their work at Edinburgh Arts Club after publication. The company had o∞ces in Edinburgh, London as well as an agent in Boston called Le Roy Phillips, and distributors in Australia, Canada and Denmark. Jessie King supplied the company with a range of book formats, from exotic leather bound copies to Pocket Books and simple grey copies of Northern Numbers. T. N. Foulis’ imprint had a distinctive visual character. Binding and typographic specifications together with the typeface commissioned from George Auriol in France by the publisher himself in 1910 rendered their books instantly identifiable (Elphick and Harris 1998).

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Thomas Nelson & Sons, one of the leading publishers in Scotland of atlases and school books, opened new printing works in 1907 to maintain the volume of publications produced in new, cheap formats, such as their popular Royal Readers Series. The increased productivity levels allowed them to launch a successful Collection Nelson series in France in 1910 (France and Reynolds), and drew them to acquire T. C. & E. C. Jack in 1915. Edwin Jack commissioned illustrators; adapted artwork by illustrators like Katharine Cameron to a range of titles; and also engaged artists such as Edmund Blampied (1886–1966) to design book wrappers. Jack sent out artists’ specifications and checked incoming drafts prior to the completion of final artwork. Andrew Hall gives a fascinating account of dealings between Blampied and his publisher (Hall 1999). In the 1920s, Nelsons continued with a wide range of series including their Royal Libraries, The Edinburgh Library, Nelson’s Classics, Juvenile Library, Nelson’s Novels, Nelson’s New Dickens (Scott and Thackeray) and The People’s Books (including a text on botany by Marie Stopes). David Couper Thomson (1861–1964) became proprietor of the Argos and Courier in Dundee and he produced a popular My Weekly magazine for girls in 1906. He launched the Sunday Post in 1915 and the Dandy and Beano comics in the 1930s. Glasgow and Edinburgh newspaper editors also profited from the popular circulation of their papers and provided opportunities for writers, cartoonists and illustrators during this period. At this time while surrealism made more impact in France and Italy, narrative illustration still appealed to Scottish printers, publishers and artists alike. During the First World War, Joseph Simpson left T. N. Foulis to become a war artist. Cecile Walton and other members of the Edinburgh Group continued their role as painters and teachers. Walton illustrated work for the stationer and bookseller Waterstons, as well as for publishers in Edinburgh and the South. In the 1920s some small private editions of poems were published and the Porpoise Press, for whom Cecile Walton designed a logogram, rose out of the ashes of war. As well as writing for news papers, C. M. Grieve (Hugh MacDiarmid) also represented Scottish poets in copies of Northern Numbers published by T. N. Foulis in 1920, the first of whose issues was dedicated to Neil Munro and the second to John Buchan. If MacDiarmid was a theoretical modernist, many Scottish designers and illustrators shunned surrealist and modernist trends in design and illustration. If William McCance and Agnes Miller Parker were hailed as modernists by MacDiarmid and James Whyte of The Modern Scot (Normand 2000), their work remained carefully crafted and often highly detailed.

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Certainly, Miller Parker’s engravings remain detailed studies of nature that resisted the complete abstraction of modernism. As radio broadcasting took root in Scotland in the 1920s, the British Broadcasting Corporation absorbed visual artists who could tell stories on the radio. Such was the experience of Cecile Walton and Wendy Wood and other members of the PEN club (Addison 2001; 2005). The benefit of artists who could speak to audiences and then design and write books related to their subject kept Scottish publishing lively. As economic depression clouded the late 1920s and early 1930s, Scottish nationalism became more popular and the Saltire Society (founded in 1937) was a rallying point for those who wished to sustain Scottish culture against the odds of economic depression and the erosion of traditional Scottish values. Nevertheless, Naomi Mitchison continued to write and to engage illustrators for some of her works. In this period Oliver & Boyd and James Thin supported publications by Saltire Society authors such as Stanley Cursiter, Agnes Mure Mackenzie and a range of writers for the Chapbooks designed largely by Joan Hassall. William Maclellan in Glasgow also produced literature relating to more radical developments in contemporary politics.

Joan Hassall (1906–88) Joan Hassall’s work in Edinburgh shows how collaboration between Scottish cultural networks, Scottish publishers and an English artist could produce books which, though small, mainly simple in text and content and inexpensive, created designs that combined the values of livres d’artistes with viable commercial publishing. Discussions between Hassall and the Publications Committee of the Saltire Society (founded 1937) chaired by Robert Hurd, took place in 1943. Alison Cairns secretary to the committee corresponded with Hassall who drew up designs and typographic instructions for thirteen subsequent Saltire Chapbooks – chapbooks being traditionally a staple of Scottish publishing. The principal of Edinburgh College of Art, Hubert Wellington, asked Joan Hassall to become tutor of book illustration and drawing in 1940 to replace Kingsley Cooke who had join with the Merchant Navy at the outbreak of the Second World War. She had studied art at the Royal Academy Schools (1928–33) and learned engraving from R. John Beedham in London. Her engravings had been bought by members of the Scottish Modern Arts Association in 1938. This young, single, privileged Englishwoman took the job at a time when unemployment in Scotland was rife, and when the relationship between nationalism and art was contested, all of which meant

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Figure 2.19 Joan Hassall illustrations 1. Motif from Pride and Prejudice, Folio Society, 1957. [reproduced from Motif: A Journal of the Visual Arts 2 (Feb. 1957): 7, 8] that Hassall faced ‘hostility from certain of the Scots . . . [at] . . . the appointment of a Southerner’ (McLean 1970: 14). Hassall, the Saltire Society and the printers R. & R. Clark nevertheless formed a fruitful collaboration. The Saltire Society publications subcommittee which carried the project forward included John Oliver, director of English Studies at Moray House; writer George Scott-Moncrie≠; Stanley Cursiter, curator of the Scottish National Galleries; and J. M. Reid, a journalist for the Scottish Journal. Agnes Mure Mackenzie, whose own research on Scottish literature underwrote the cost of the premises of the Saltire Society, compiled an anthology of Old Scottish Christmas Hymns for Chapbook 8, published in 1947. One work by Mure Mackenzie entitled Scotland on Freedom drafted as Chapbook 11 and scheduled to appear in 1951 was the only publication listed but not printed. Even so, Mure Mackenzie’s views on nationalism had already appeared in The Arts and the Future of Scotland in 1942 where she expressed the view that, for Scotland, ‘mixing national art and nationalism . . . may do grave injury to them both’ (Mackenzie 1942: xx).

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Figure 2.19 Joan Hassall illustrations 2. Motif from The Early Hours, Oxford University Press, 1954. [reproduced from Motif: A Journal of the Visual Arts 2 (Feb. 1957): 7, 8]

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The first of the Saltire Chapbooks was Four Scottish Poems of the Sixteenth Century chosen by John Oliver (1943). He also anthologised five other texts: Mally Lee and Three Folk Songs (1944); William Dunbar, Seasonal Poems (1944); Songs of the ’45 (1945), Whuppity Stoorie (1946) and Scottish Children’s Rhymes and Lullabies (1948). The Marriage of Robin Redbreast and the Wren (1945) rapidly reprinted twice (in 1948 and 1951; and again more recently in 1998 by the Saltire Society) and Rashie Coat (1951) were rewritten for the Saltire Chapbooks by George Scott-Moncrie≠. With wartime stringencies the chapbooks were specified for a crown 16mo paper size so that they could be printed cheaply, carried easily and sold inexpensively. The antique paper was eked out. Blair and William Maxwell of printers R. & R. Clark o≠ered hints and advice to Hassall. They had already printed Harrap’s 1940 edition of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford, which included a frontispiece by her. Ainslie Thin, publishing director of Oliver & Boyd, o≠ered assistance if the Maxwells, Fordie Forrester or Robin Lorimer could not be consulted on production processes. Chapbook front covers were printed in two colours. Remaining pages contained illustrations and ornaments to maintain the decorative appeal of the texts. Specifications for the booklets varied, although The Marriage of Robin Redbreast and the Wren was set in a Scotch Roman typeface. Hassall recommended that Lennox Paterson, a lecturer at Glasgow School of Art illustrate Six Poems of the Nineteenth Century (1946). Elisabeth Olding illustrated the last in the series, The Siller Gun (1952), originally written in 1777 by John Mayne and selected by a visiting Canadian lecturer at Moray House, Gordon F. Sleigh. During a wartime hibernation of printing and publishing in Edinburgh, Hassall brought Stanley Morison to speak to Edinburgh College of Art on the typographic arts. His speech was printed by James Thin, bookselling brother of Ainslie, as a commemoration of the event, with Hassall’s own engraving of the college on the title page. For Ainslie Thin at Oliver & Boyd, Hassall designed specifications for James Fergusson’s The Green Garden (1946) and for Agnes Mure Mackenzie’s Scottish Pageant (1946). Writing to Alison Cairns, she noted in 1945: it seemed even to my pro-English eye that Scotland had not been fairly treated and it made me feel ashamed . . . I should be glad one day to hear about the arguments for separation from England . . . so that when I go South I shall know what to say when it crops up . . . I am in many ways sorry to be going South as I now have equally as many valued friends here as there, but the reason is chiefly economic, and although Ainslie [Thin] valiantly concocts jobs for me, it is not enough and I must seek my bread where it is best to be found.4 4

Joan Hassall to Alison Cairns 7 October, 1945 NLS Acc 9393, 971.

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Beyond 1945 Hassall illustrated Saltire Society member Eric Linklater’s Sealskin Trousers and Other Stories (1947). She submitted book designs for The Poems of Robert Burns published by MacLehose in 1950, later issued as a Book Club Edition by Glasgow University Press which was revised and reissued in 1965. For William Collins, she designed specifications for John Robertson Allan’s Lowlands of Scotland in 1951 for the Festival of Britain and she also contributed ornaments to a limited edition of 200, of David Burnett’s The Heart’s Undesign printed in Edinburgh by John Anderson at the Tregara Press in 1977. The relationship between English art and Scottish publishing was never simple but was nonetheless fruitful. Rosemary Addison

The 1950s–1980s The energetic resistance to books as plain consumer products by Eduardo Paolozzi (1924–2005), Richard Demarco (1930–) and Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925–2005) has left a legacy of extraordinary activity of yet another Scottish Renaissance in art and design. Their works run parallel to materials produced at the Edinburgh Printmaker’s Workshop, the Glasgow Printmakers and Peacock Press in Aberdeen since the 1960s. Any account of design and illustration in Scotland must acknowledge the works of Eduardo Paolozzi (1924–2005) and Richard Demarco (1930–). Born and brought up in Edinburgh they have made vast contributions to the development of art and design both in Scotland and abroad. Paolozzi’s grant for the Paolozzi Gallery in Edinburgh is a tribute to the city where he was born and includes his significant collection of surrealist books and artefacts as well as his own work. Apart from sculpture, his intricate prints and experiments with paper pushed the boundaries of what could be achieved with colour, photographic collage and graphic design, playing with forms and designs and incorporating images from popular culture, from magazines and from other prints. Demarco produced an illustrated diary of his time in Paris while still at Edinburgh College of Art (1953) while the same year he illustrated work for T. C. & E. C. Jack. His Life in Pictures (1995) is far from finished, and from the 1950s he collaborated on projects with Ian Hamilton Finlay such as A Use for Old Beehives (1970), The Little Seamstress (1970), limited editions of Rock Rose (1971) and Glossary (1971) at Finlay’s Wild Hawthorn Press at Dunsyre. As well as running his own galleries and Festival Events, Demarco has given energy to a range of other events, plus a guide to Edinburgh printed at the Moubray Press – a publishing house in Edinburgh run in the 1980s by publishers Nick Allen and Sheila Mackay.

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The cultural life of Scotland has been a≠ected by a periodical known as Chapman, edited by Joy Hendry and Raymond Ross, begun in 1970. In the same year Famedram (an amalgamation of other publishing projects from Johnston and Bacon) also began. After the inception of Canongate Press in 1978 by Stephanie and Angus Wolfe-Murray, Alasdair Gray’s publication of Lanark was a major event in the evolution of design and illustration in printing and publishing in Scotland. Gray had trained at Glasgow School of Art and had already held a retrospective exhibition of his works in 1974; Molendinar Press in Glasgow published A Scent of Water by the author in 1975; and Glasgow Print Studio produced The Comedy of the White Dog in 1979. As an artist, Gray understood the impact of graphics and typography. Lanark originally appeared from Lippincott and Crowell in New York (1980) before being issued by Canongate in 1981, and reprinted by them in the same year.

Beyond the 1980s Designs and illustrations were applied to a vast range of di≠erent and specialised subjects. Editions of the Bible, children’s literature, poetry, Robert Burns, Walter Scott and R. L. Stevenson underpinned the prosperity of publishing houses over decades. Fairy tales and J. M. Barrie’s fiction provided many opportunities to artists while later artists like Mairi Hedderwick or Annie Patterson have produced series of their own illustrated writing. The Traverse Theatre, galvanised into existence by a visiting American Jim Haynes, helped Salamander Press to institute its playscripts from a number of Scottish writers as well as to hold readings by Salamander poets. The significance of books is maintained – metaphorically – in the Hugh MacDiarmid Memorial Sculpture by Jake Harvey (1985) near Langholm in the Borders (see illustration 3.8). Its steel and bronze construction in the form of a large book frame is a monument to collaborative work between industry and the artist. The essentially Scottish poetic root from MacDiarmid as an inspiration for the sculpture indicates the centrality of poetry to Scottish life and its emanation into craft and fine art. The irony is that as the sculpture was made books were changing from solid to electronic forms, and computers began to take the place of many of the functions of the book. If making books in the past involved craft and industrial processes, cybernetics has given art and information a new electronic form. The Scottish Book Collector (1987≠.), edited by Jennie Renton, maintained a role as a printed publication until, following the predicted

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trend towards the demise of the book and the absence of paper, it became an online publication in the form of Textualities. The publisher Gordon Wright has also turned photographer to represent Scottish authors. The pleasure of making books out of paper and ink could be compared to the contemporary fascination for websites, such as trAce or the construction of online information. If Becta keeps conventional online cultural resources alive and provides the basis for education and information for the fine arts and commercial activities of the future then fine-art, commercial trends and the combined e≠ects of both persist to make Scottish publishing at, for instance, Trigger Press a vital force in the twenty-first century. The website for Scotoons shows that Tom Bullimore, Ian Anderson and Murray Robertson not only revive heroic images of Scotland but also continue a cartoon tradition used by newspapers and magazines of the past. Scottish artists still make books and fine bindings (Elizabeth Hobbs, Jean Johnstone, Elizabeth Soutar, Telfer Stokes and Helen Douglas at Weproductions of Yarrow, founded in 1971). Faith Shannon maintains traditions of fine bindings with new designs. Edinburgh, Napier and Stirling Universities run courses related to book history and material culture while Dundee also has a Centre for Artists’ Books. Libraries across Scotland remain rich sources. Glasgow’s Women’s Library (founded in 1991) and the Scottish Poetry Library (founded in 1984) nurture creativity and experimental work in words, print and paper. Design continued to feature strongly in books and websites as part of a dynamic contemporary visual culture. Calum Colvin makes images specifically referring to the Scottish context. He celebrates Ossian and Burns’ poems in carefully constructed sets with books, open on shelves. If the ‘Book as a Work of Art’ means di≠erent things to di≠erent people across the libraries of Scotland from the Shetlands to the Borders, then books will continue to be produced and appreciated for the foreseeable future.

The Book and Photography Tom Normand When Robert Louis Stevenson first published his reminiscence of his ‘precipitous city’, Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes, it was illustrated with etchings by A. Brunet-Debaines from drawings by the distinguished academicians Sam Bough and William Ewart Lockhart. Accompanying these was a number of woodcut decorations by Hector Chalmers and R. Kent-Thomas. This edition, dated 1879, was followed by subsequent reprints generally illustrated by equally eminent artists. In 1954, however, Rupert Hart-Davis published an edition of the book ‘With twentythree Photographs by Alvin Langdon Coburn’. Janet Adam Smith, the Stevenson scholar and biographer of John Buchan, remarked in her preface to the 1954 edition: For a writer with this precise, selective vision, a photographer would seem to be the ideal illustrator – a photographer, that is, who was sensitive to appearances, scrupulous in choice, patient in stalking a viewpoint or waiting for a light. Such undeniably Mr. Alvin Langdon Coburn shows himself to be. For though – it seems odd to record – the Picturesque Notes have had to wait seventy-five years for an edition with photographs, it was worth waiting for Mr. Coburn’s remarkable series. (11–12) Here, the sotto voce aside ‘it seems odd to record’ whispers a fundamental truth concerning photography and the book in Scotland, for the history of this relationship is both remarkable and curiously fractured. From the birth of photography, in 1839, to the present time, the photograph has been in cohabitation with the book. Unlike the more traditional of the visual arts the photograph is essentially a printed medium. In consequence its presentation has been through the book rather than via the salon wall, and it has decorated the book in a multitude of ways. 168

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Figure 2.20 Robert Louis Stevenson, Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes.

Photography was originally presented to the world in book form, initially in Anna Atkins’ folio Photographs of British Algae dating from 1843 and, more conventionally, in William Henry Fox Talbot’s book formatted The Pencil of Nature published in 1844–6. As the potential of this novel medium became clear the photograph became the favoured illustration in travel books. More commercially it decorated the tourist memento pamphlet so successfully promoted by the embryonic travel

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industry in the middle of the nineteenth century. In this incarnation it would become the bedrock activity of those commercial studios organised by George Washington Wilson in Aberdeen and by James Valentine in Dundee. Moreover, the assumption that the photograph recorded ‘reality’ led to its use as a documentary form. Consequently the social improvement agenda of civic leaders was often expressed in book form heavily illustrated by photographs of the urban poor. The most famous of these was Thomas Annan’s The Old Closes and Streets of Glasgow published initially in 1878–9 and reprinted in an enlarged edition by James MacLehose & Sons in 1900. A corollary of this phenomenon was the use of the camera as an aid in anthropological and ethnographic ventures. This became a speciality of the Scottish photographer John Thomson whose books Illustrations of China and its People (1874), and Street Life in London (1877–8) were models of nineteenth-century documentary photography. The great technical di∞culty in producing photographically illustrated books during the nineteenth century lay in the nature of the print itself. Talbot’s ‘calotype’ process was a fundamental advance on Daguerre’s original technology in that it allowed for multiple photographic prints from a single paper negative. Nevertheless photographs, in this period, had to be produced separately and then ‘tipped-in’ to the text of each book. Naturally such books were produced in limited editions and were expensive. For example, Talbot’s The Pencil of Nature was originally published in an edition of circa 150 copies. Photography, however, was a late child of the Industrial Revolution and its rapid technical development mirrored the myriad expansions of the Victorian era. The crucial breakthrough in photographic printing occurred in the 1890s when the ‘halftone’ photographic print allowed for an infinite number of reproductions. From this point photographs became economically viable as illustrations for mass-media products and would be used in newspapers, magazines and journals, and, of course, in books. With this technology photographs became a favoured illustrative material in scientific texts and encyclopaedias, topographical and travel books, works of autobiography and reminiscence, books of poetry, literature and art.

Reproducing images The period 1880 to 2000 is characterised by a constant striving for perfect reproduction of the image on the printed page, particularly in full colour. The earliest experiments in monotone reproduction, with the use of screens marked with hatched lines to split the image into tiny units and improve the

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reproduction of tones, were made in the 1850s. During the late 1870s and early 1880s further experiments were made, until the first successful combination of this technique with photography by Meisenbach to create the ‘half-tone block’. The originals used in this process could be photographs and transparencies, but the process was also used to reproduce other mediums such as charcoal sketches, watercolours and paintings. A glass plate is ruled with very fine, cross-hatched lines, then placed between the original image and the photographic plate. The quality of the final result is governed partly by the quality of the ruled screen used: the finer the lines the more varied the tones achieved. The negative image that results consists of a pattern of tiny round dots. The dots are larger in the darker areas of the image, while those in the lighter areas are smaller, and appear to be more widely spaced. The image can then be developed and printed onto a metal printing plate. The dots appear in relief on the plate, and when it is printed onto paper, the result mimics the tones of the original at ordinary reading distance. However, the dots can be seen if a halftone illustration is inspected using a magnifying glass. Roy Lichtenstein drew attention to this technique in his paintings based on comic-book art. The half-tone process was first used in newspapers and periodicals, but from about 1890 it was also used in book illustration, and experiments were made using cross-hatched colour filters to reproduce colour by means of a similar process. Four-colour process work (or full-colour printing) uses the three subtractive primary colours – cyan, magenta and yellow plus black to add detail – to reproduce a facsimile of the original. A separate negative/ positive screened film, plate, cylinder or stencil is required for each of the four colours. As the colours are printed on top of one another, the reproduction emerges in the correct tones. As each separation has been screened at a di≠erent angle, the printed dots overlap one another to create the optical illusion of solidity in the image. The image has been produced according to the principles of additive and subtractive synthesis. The additive primary colours appear to the eye as blue, red and green. However, if these were beams of coloured light projected onto a white screen, where they overlapped in the centre, they would cancel each other out and create ‘white light’. Where the colours overlap on the ‘outside’, they form the secondary colours of yellow, magenta and cyan. In subtractive synthesis, white light is reflected by the substrate and printing the coloured inks (cyan, magenta and yellow) subtracts approximately one-third of the spectrum from the reflected white light so that the reader is tricked into seeing the colour required. For instance, within an illustration of a yellow da≠odil, the yellow ink absorbs the blue portion of light and reflects a mix of red and green that the eye/brain sees as yellow. This is because each printing pigment is formed from two primary colours.

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Printing in colour, particularly for long runs such as popular magazines, used photogravure (colloquially known as gravure). The image is etched onto a cylindrical metal plate (often copper). A viscous ink is then flooded into the etched cells and the recessed image areas filled with ink. The excess is then wiped away by the flexible doctor blade. Intensity of colour is achieved by varying the depth of the cells and the amount of pressure applied during the printing process. In order to produce the cylinder plates, three processes evolved. Firstly, (and now obsolete) conventional cell gravure used criss-crossing cell formation of equal size but di≠ering depths. The viscosity of the ink is proportional to the cell. Invert half-tone became instead in the second half of the twentieth century the norm in magazine and catalogue printing. The originated image (either in film or printed format) is mounted on a drum or flatbed, scanned and the electric monitor reads light either by reflection (print) or by transmission (film). These signals then drive a stylus that engraves the half-tone dots onto the copper ballard. As origination and cylinder preparation costs were expensive, this process was not cost-e≠ective for runs smaller than 250,000 copies and thus most machines tended to be web-fed rather than sheet-fed. By the end of the twentieth century, cheap flatbed scanners were available for the desktop publishing market. The original image is read flat and most scanners use charged coupled device sensors, travelling along the length of the flatbed to convert reflection copy into electronic signals. The resulting images can be taken into a manipulation program such as Adobe Photoshop on Mac or PC and prepared for publication within a document. The Adobe PDF format can be used to ‘fix’ text and embedded images for conventional or digital printing. Alistair McCleery

In Scotland this history became marked by a burgeoning industry in photographically illustrated topographical books mapping out Scotland’s landscape and cultural history. In fact this project was established at the very dawn of photography and flowed back to a literary precedent, the epic vision of Walter Scott. Talbot’s second book of photographs was titled Sun Pictures in Scotland and was published in 1845. This book consisted of some twenty-three photographic views connected with the life and writings of Sir Walter Scott (see Smith 1989). Talbot had taken these photographs in 1844 and was, to some extent, capitalising on the immense popularity of Scott’s work in the midnineteenth century. Consequently he included images of Abbotsford House, and of Scott’s resting-place in Dryburgh Abbey. He also established something of a fashion for photographs taken in and around

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Loch Katrine, already made famous as the picturesque setting of Scott’s landmark poem of 1810, The Lady of the Lake. Talbot was prescient in creating this album, for it was Scott’s reputation, and the romantic vision of Scotland that he popularised, that would become the staple of landscape photographers for the ensuing decades and deep into the twentieth century. Amongst those who were to inherit and develop Talbot’s initiative were the commercial photographers George Washington Wilson and James Valentine. Separately, they created an industry for view-books that enclosed photographic essays depicting the historic sites of Scotland. These booklets became a staple tourist fare after the opening out of the Highlands by the railways, and the popularisation of Highland holidays promoted by Queen Victoria’s summer residences at Balmoral. The heir to this tradition of landscape photography in twentiethcentury Scotland was surely Robert Moyes Adam. Adam was an ‘amateur’ photographer whose role as archivist and botanist at the Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh encouraged his interest in photographing the wilderness areas of the Scottish Highlands. This expanded into images of historical sites and panoramic vistas (see Normand 2005). Importantly, Adam’s archive of some 15,000 glass-plate negatives and landscape images would eventually become the stock holding of the publishing firm D. C. Thomson of Dundee. Thomson’s prolific populism led to Adam’s photographs becoming ubiquitous in the literature of Scotland, and indeed something of an embedded motif in the Scottish psyche. Besides their omnipresence in the Scots Magazine they would decorate innumerable and multifarious books. Notable publications illustrated by Adam’s remarkable photographs include the first edition of Hugh MacDiarmid’s The Islands of Scotland (1939) and, even earlier in the century, Alisdair Alpin Macgregor’s Summer Days among the Western Isles (1929). The majority of books highlighting Adam’s black and white photographs were travel and topographical works, often with a sentimental or romantic flavour. Sometimes, however, the books were historical in character as with Alex MacLehose’s Historic Haunts of Scotland, first published in 1936, while occasionally the photographs would accompany poetry and a kind of wistful prose reverie as in Brenda G. Macrow’s Unto the Hills (1947). Robert Moyes Adam may have been the most frequently reproduced of landscape photographers in Scotland during the middle years of the twentieth century, but this was a large and expanding market. Adam’s work would be reprised, and then emulated, in innumerable landscape books that fed the hunger for wild panoramic views in a period of urban

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expansion and even now exist as the standard stock of antiquarian booksellers and commercial book-stores. An interesting sub-set of these topographical books was the photographic survey of Scotland’s major cities. Again these would focus, chiefly, on sites of historical interest but might also include views of architectural significance. Adam, himself, had contributed to a book on his native Edinburgh by George Scott-Moncrie≠, published in 1947, and this might be viewed as a precursor to the republication of Stevenson’s Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes in 1954, complete with Coburn’s majestic photographs. Significantly these publications occurred when the city of Edinburgh was on the cusp of a massive post-war expansion and they may be regarded as a reflection on a stable environment in a period of rapid social change. This aspect of photography and the book remains important. An early example of the use of photography for documentary or sociological purposes was Thomas Annan’s The Old Closes and Streets of Glasgow. Annan was responding to the patronage of the Glasgow City Improvement Trust, created in 1866, and was employed by this body to photograph those dilapidated wynds and closes that were to be demolished in order to create a modern city. His photographs, taken between 1868 and 1877, remain a testament to social conditions for the urban poor in nineteenth-century Scotland and some of the most remarkable documents in photographic history. The images were first published in portfolio form in 1877. Subsequently there were two editions published in 1900 and these were in book form with additional photographs taken by Thomas Annan’s son, James Craig Annan. The younger Annan was certainly Scotland’s finest pictorial photographer and he reproduced the photographs as photogravures. One of these 1900 editions contained an introductory text by William Young which served to situate the images as examples of urban blight now ameliorated by civic renewal. This publication is not only a pioneering work of documentary sociology, but remains an important and influential example of the powerful synergy between the book and the photograph. In fact, it was another Scot, John Thomson, who was to reveal the potential for this genus of photographic book (Ovenden 1997). Thomson’s reputation was built on his travels in China, between 1870 and 1872, and the extraordinary photographs he took of life in its cities, and throughout its provinces, during a period when the country was hardly known in the West. He chose to present these images in book form, the first publication being Foochow and the River Min (1873). Subsequent publications included Illustrations of China and its People, from 1874, but his best-known work remains Street Life in London

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(1877–8). There is an echo of Annan’s project here, for Thomson approaches his subject as an anthropologist, recording and documenting a near ‘invisible’ people. In their time these were quite exceptional images in that they explored and exposed a subterranean culture complete with an astonishing cast of characters including ‘ “ Mush-Fakers” and Ginger-Beer Makers’, ‘ “ Hookey Alf ” of Whitechapel’, and most famously the sad and desperate figure of ‘The Crawler’. Thomson’s visual material was accompanied by a text, written by Adolphe Smith, that completed the proselytising and reformist agenda of the project and established something of a paradigm for ‘photojournalism’. This has been one of the great strengths of photography, and of its relationship with the book. Almost a century later, in the 1960s, Oscar Marzaroli would photograph the changing face of Glasgow, and similar projects would be undertaken by Joseph McKenzie in the cities of Glasgow, Dundee and Dunfermline. In period, these images remained within the visual culture and were exhibited within the gallery context, but subsequently they have been anthologised and presented in book form. Marzaroli’s work, in particular, has found a wide audience with the publication of Shades of Scotland by Mainstream Publishing in 1989 where it appeared complete with a text by James Grassie and a foreword by William McIlvanney. In fact McIlvanney had early associated himself with Marzaroli in the publication of Shades of Grey: Glasgow 1956–1988, while Mainstream would also publish an album of Marzaroli’s photographs of Glasgow’s People in 1993. These later publications coincided with the period where documentary photographs began to be viewed as aesthetic works in their own right, and indeed where photography itself came to be packaged as art. The debate between photography and the fine arts flows back to the very invention of the medium. Talbot initially christened the photographic process ‘The Pencil of Nature’ and hence the link to drawing, while the mechanical nature of the camera and its complex chemical printing technologies related the form to science. Artists, and art institutions, were loath to a≠ord the medium an aesthetic credibility, but in the twentieth century this resistance faltered. One of the principal mechanisms for the breakdown of this barrier has been the gradual penetration of what has come to be known as the ‘Photobook’. Increasingly photographic essays, anthologised collections and individual aesthetic projects have been presented to the public in book form. These photobooks, sometimes styled as ‘artist’s books’, are now recognised as valuable aesthetic objects in their own right. Moreover contemporary photographers have sought to release their work in this form.

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It may be argued that the first consciously fashioned photobook relating to the Scottish context was Paul Strand’s Tir a’Mhurain: The Outer Hebrides of Scotland, published by MacGibbon & Kee in 1962. This landmark publication featured photographs by one of the most eminent figures in the photographic canon, and a commentary by Basil Davidson. In the manner of Strand’s humanist vision it presented a sympathetic portrait of the crofting community of South Uist, and included some of the most powerfully evocative images in the history of photography. It remains a moot point whether this work functions as an ‘artist’s book’ or as a documentary record, for the photographs themselves are highly aestheticised while the photographer’s intention, and that of Davidson’s commentary, is highly politicised (MacDonald 2004). In some sense this reveals the paradox of these publications. The camera remains a recorder of external reality, but the photobook presents the world as ‘art’. This riddle continued into more contemporary publications. In 1985 David Williams produced his Pictures from No Man’s Land: St Margaret’s School for Girls, Edinburgh. This book contained a series of images documenting the world of St Margaret’s School in all its complexity, and these photographs presented a vivid picture of life in the school from infant arrivals to sixth-form graduates. The images – subtle, evocative, humorous, and perceptive – were replete with a kind of plaintive sensitivity. With this, the sense of the photographic record as document was overwhelmed by an aesthetic sensibility that recognised the power of the photograph as memorial. Projects in which the photograph and the book combine to create a discrete artefact, or art object, have become more frequent in recent years. Thomas Joshua Cooper has presented his work in a series of unique books that showcase the nuances of his distinctive style. Chief amongst these have been Between Dark and Dark, from 1986, and Dreaming the Gokstadt, from 1988, both of which are beautifully produced books published by Graeme Murray in Edinburgh. The landscape element of Cooper’s photography would seem to link these projects to the topographical romance of Robert Moyes Adam, and earlier landscape photographers whose work was presented in books, but the overriding concern in these modern ‘artist’s books’ is the reproduction of the image in its most sophisticated and pristine form. Here, the book both showcases the images and exists independently as the work of art. Contemporaneously with the development of the photobook there has emerged a trope wherein the art of photographers is set in combination with the work of writers. Throughout the 1980s George Mackay

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Figure 2.21 Ian Hamilton Finlay, 1983.

Brown was to collaborate with the Swedish photographer Gunnie Moberg. This partnership led to a number of significant publications: The Loom of Light from 1986, and A Celebration for Magnus from 1987; A Portrait of Orkney, first published in 1981 and then republished in 1988; and the limited edition folio titled Stone, published in 1987, which remains a model of its type. One of the strongest and most fruitful collaborations in recent years has been that between the photographer Robin Gillanders and the artist and poet Ian Hamilton Finlay. Finlay was one of Scotland’s most challenging and subtle of artists. His signature project, the landscaped garden ‘Little Sparta’, is surely one of the finest artworks of the present time. Gillanders has long been favoured as the recorder of developments in the garden, though, in truth, his photographs are not simple records but present an aesthetic correspondence with the evocative moods of the garden spaces. His limited edition book Hu≠ Lane, for example, o≠ers images of the herbaceous planting in a specially constructed garden walk and describes, also, the aphorisms encountered on wooden benches along the pathway. This sublimely beautiful book was published in year 2000 by Finlay’s own Wild Hawthorn Press. Gillanders has also published related artist’s books through the imprint

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of the Scottish National Galleries, and these works, titled Little Sparta (1998) and The Philosopher’s Garden (2004) capture the garden as a kind of intellectual reverie. The photograph, here and above, is the ineluctable bearer of this meditation, and the book the perfect instrument for its display and dissemination.

The books of Ian Hamilton Finlay Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925–2006) was a poet perhaps best known for ‘Little Sparta’, his neo-classical garden in the Lanarkshire hills. Alongside works made in stone, wood and bronze for the garden, and indeed other sites around the world, he produced a huge body of printed material – books, folding cards, prints and postcards. Most of his work was made in collaboration with other artists or craftsmen – stone-carvers, watercolour painters, graphic artists, calligraphers – with Finlay acting as a kind of ‘creative director’, conceiving the work and overseeing its realisation. After briefly attending Glasgow School of Art, and undertaking his National Service when he spent time in a still ruined West Germany, he moved to the Scottish countryside where he painted and wrote short stories, plays and poems. In the 1960s he emerged as a principal figure in the international Concrete Poetry movement which, with its emphasis on brevity and the visual elements of language, marked his work ever after. Most of Finlay’s printed work was published by his Wild Hawthorn Press (WHP), though he occasionally worked with other publishers, often to produce larger-scale ‘anthologies’ of his work. Each WHP book tends to be complete in itself, that is it is not a collection of di≠erent texts bound between covers; and each is very precise in its communication with its audience, by way of format, graphic design and the sequencing of words and images. The work as a whole is thus necessarily dispersed, connecting with pre-Socratic notions of the fragment, the Renaissance understanding of the emblem, and a post-modernist sensitivity to the non-hierarchical. This short account o≠ers an overview of forty years of book-making, an activity undertaken alongside the production of work using other materials, in the context of which the books should ideally be seen. Nonetheless, isolated thus they o≠er a particular pathway through Finlay’s developing oeuvre. Finlay’s first books The Sea Bed (1958) and Glasgow Beasts (1961) are each a collection of texts written using recognisable literary forms (stories and poems respectively) accompanied by illustrations. The first books to feature concrete poetry (realised without collaborators) use simple but innovative graphic design elements to ‘animate’ their minimal texts, such as the coloured papers which create the rainbow in Ocean Stripe series 3

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(1965). Those printed by the Salamander Press use more ambitious formats: Autumn Poem (1966) features semitransparent leaves and circular photographic images, while the tiny Wave (1969) is beautifully printed and ingeniously folded. Rhymes for Lemons (1970) features a favourite theme of the time, fishing-boat names. The ‘rhymes’ of the title are visual ones, with the boats’ shapes linked to those of lemons in the drawings by Margot Sandeman; and by extension, these contemporary northern boats are linked with the Mediterranean and the classical world. The images are no longer simply illustrations to a text, but the two combined create the impact and the meaning of the book. During the 1970s Finlay often paired the themes of art history and warfare. The mock test So You Want to be a Panzer Leader (1975) asks: ‘You are instructing your tank crews in the art of camouflage. Can you suggest analogies between this art and the art of N. Poussin? The Vorticists? Dubu≠et?’ A wider variety of formats is used, the booklets feature better paper, typography and binding, and nearly all are realised in collaboration with a named artist, who contributes drawn, painted or photographic images. Alongside original texts, and those adapted from other sources, Finlay increasingly uses quotations. Dzaezl (1979) juxtaposes John Borg Manduca’s sketches of an aircraft carrier with short original texts and quotations from Walpole, Malraux and Cézanne, extending the earlier use of fishing-boat names and other ‘found’ texts. The 1980s highlight the French Revolution, and specifically Robespierre and Saint-Just. A Litany A Requiem (1981) lists their names and those of other revolutionary leaders together with certain days from the revolutionary calendar, whose months, ‘décades’ (or ten-day ‘weeks’) and days were renamed after plants, animals and tools. In Thérmidor (1989) Finlay creates a ‘Stations of the Jacobin Cross’ by naming the ten days leading up to the execution of the Robespierrists, culminating in ‘arrosoir’ or watering-can, an image which Finlay uses as a metaphor for a revolutionary culture of sustenance and growth. During this period Finlay’s rate of book production dropped, perhaps because he was engaged in a long-running dispute with Strathclyde Regional Council, centring on Little Sparta’s ‘Garden Temple’. He claimed this was a religious building, thus exempt from rates; the council claimed it was an art gallery, thus liable for commercial rates. Exactness of definition is a prominent feature of Finlay’s work. A Country Lane (1988), by way of contrast, is more idyllic. It relates to a stile made for the Glasgow Garden Festival, and its unusually extensive text includes ‘Detached Sentences on Stiles and Lanes’, one of which is: ‘In a lane one will not encounter Apollo but one may come across Pan.’ It is a form which is well suited to Finlay’s outlook, exploring a given theme not by way

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of a consecutive or linear argument, but by a series of unconnected reflections which, taken together, o≠er various perspectives from which to examine the subject. From the mid-1980s, WHP books included proposals for sculptures, installations and interventions around the world, some of which were realised, such as A Remembrance of Robert Louis Stevenson (1987) outlining a work now in Edinburgh’s Princes St Gardens, and some not. Finlay left Stonypath rarely, and these books, and his printed material generally, were one way in which he maintained a conversation with like-minded individuals elsewhere. In the early 1990s some small WHP hardbacks were produced, including A Harbour of Roses (1993). Although not a ‘proposal’, the central idea – a list of fishing-boat names featuring the word ‘Rose’ – was later reworked for a large-scale installation at the Museum of Scotland. Earlier themes are elaborated, as in Variations (1999), where a poem by Goethe celebrating the lure of the South is transposed into an elegiac praise-poem to a fishing boat, echoing the earlier ‘rhymes for lemons’. Other ‘books’ consist of two sheets only, a cover and four internal pages, usually containing text on the middle two only, such as Two Poems (1989) which juxtaposes melancholy and awe: ‘Tombstone// Sundial/without/a gnomon’; ‘Marble// Parachute/of/the gods’. Finlay’s books (and his other print-works) lie somewhere between the endlessly reproducible commercial artefact and the one-o≠ art object. Often produced in editions of 250, they reduce the latter’s exclusivity (and cost), while retaining something of the aura of an original piece because of the care and skill which Finlay, and his collaborators, put into all aspects of their conception and realisation. Ken Cockburn

It is clear that there is a significant relationship between the photograph and the book in Scotland. Some of the most important works in the history of photography have been created for publication in book form, and a substantial number of these are Scottish publications or relate to Scotland. It remains true, however, that this remarkable history is fractured. The photobook, for example, has a respected, eminent and continuous history in twentieth-century visual culture. This is most notable in its manifestations in the Soviet Union in the postrevolutionary period, in Germany in the 1930s, and in America and Japan throughout the post-war period. In England Bill Brandt’s The English at Home (1936) represented an apotheosis of the documentary photobook (Parr 2004). In Scotland photographs have most frequently

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served a functional role as illustration. Occasionally the quality of the photography might transcend this role and the book aspire to the condition of an artwork, but this has been the exception rather than the rule. Most recently, however, the photograph itself has gained its place in the pantheon of Scottish culture, and the significance of Scotland in the history of photography has come to be recognised. With this, it is possible to re-evaluate the place of photography and its intimate relation with the book. Most especially, it becomes possible to appreciate the remarkable series of photobooks produced in the contemporary period, and the tradition to which they are heir.

Section 3

PUBLISHING POLICIES: THE LITERARY CULTURE Overview

his section examines the trajectory of Scottish literary publishing and its place in the development and evolution of Scottish literary activity over the course of the twentieth century. During this period Scottish literary publishing travelled in an arc from a point of cultural dominance to a period of decline, transformation and then redevelopment. As Andrew Nash points out in his contributions, established publishers such as Blackwood, Collins and Blackie, leaders in the field of prose and literary and children’s fiction in the Victorian period, began to falter in the early 1900s as new, more innovative English and London-based players made their marks in the publishing field. While facing competition, traditional Scottish firms were also forced to adapt to new business and distribution models, such as three-volume novel publishing formats giving way after 1894 to inexpensive one-volume reprints and new issues catering to an increasingly literate mass market. To cope with such changes, booksellers and publishers occasionally co-operated to their mutual advantages. Thus book prices remained fairly stable throughout the century as the result of the implementation of the Net Book Agreement in 1900, while publishers took advantage of changes in 1911 in copyright laws to reissue popular texts in new formats, or in the case of Nelsons and Collins, to continue experiments in inexpensive publishing formats, such as their popular onevolume, 7d fiction reprints, begun in 1906, that sustained their lists and raised their profits for decades following. The launch in 1935 of Penguin paperbacks sustained the move towards lower-cost volume publishing: by the year 2000, paperbacks accounted for 60 per cent of new titles published in Britain, attesting to the incredible e≠ect such a publishing innovation had on British reading habits, book ownership and publishing practices.

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Scottish literary culture ebbed and flowed in parallel with opportunities available to Scots authors to issue their work locally, nationally or internationally. And contrary to stereotypical pronouncements on early twentieth-century Scots literature, what was published did not consist solely of the novels in the pawky ‘Kailyard’ style favoured at the turn of the century. Subsequent generations of Scots writers and editors engaged in a robust dialogue with readers, publishing both popular texts and challenging works in spaces provided by engaged publishers and private patrons. Scottish-based or edited journals and newspapers provided many of these literary spaces throughout the century, sporadically at times, and in line with fluctuating fortunes in the literary marketplace. Older, more established Scottish journals such as the monthly Blackwood’s Magazine, the weekly Chambers’s Journal, or the venerable monthly Edinburgh Review, begun in the early part of the nineteenth century, tottered on into the twentieth century only to be sidelined by more active entrants in the cultural arena. As Margery Palmer-McCulloch points out, the ‘Scottish Renaissance’ of the 1920s and 1930s, led by C. M. Grieve (Hugh MacDiarmid) among others, was fuelled by periodical and poetry publication, and appearances of new work in journals such as the Scots Magazine (published from 1924) and the Modern Scot (published between 1930 and 1936). New players anxious to engage in critical engagement with Scottish identity would turn to such journals, as well as to small, specialist Scottish publishers such as the Edinburgh-based Porpoise Press, though more mainstream publishers were not averse to o≠ering occasional support in these areas, as in the case of the Edinburgh publishers William Blackwood & Sons, who published Hugh MacDiarmid’s first three volumes of poetry in the 1920s. Cultural nationalism featured as a key theme throughout twentiethcentury Scottish literary publishing culture, whether in the form of the many Scots who were involved in the business at home and abroad, of the editors such as W. Robertson Nicoll at the beginning of the century, or Duncan Glen in the last forty years, who shaped Scottish cultural output in their respective literary journals, or of the sentiment governing the rise of niche publishing and small literary periodicals in Scotland from the 1960s onwards, begun in response to the loss of older firms to conglomerate purchases and integration into multinational corporate structures, and the dominance of London-based firms in publishing and cultural terms. As Jane Potter indicates, throughout the 1950s and 1960s major work by Scots writers was taken on initially by London-based or English regional publishers, who recognised the literary and commercial potential of these voices when their less astute

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Scottish rivals did not. During this period Norman MacCaig was published by Chatto & Windus, Edwin Morgan by the Manchester-based Carcanet Press, and George Mackay Brown, whose first work was published in Kirkwall by the Orkney Press, was later picked up for the lists of Chatto & Windus, the Hogarth Press, Gollancz and John Murray. Matters changed as new players such as Akros Press, Canongate, Mainstream and Polygon Press entered the marketplace in the 1970s and 1980s. Polygon Press, initially begun as a student-run organisation a∞liated to Edinburgh University in the 1970s, then managed between 1988 and 1990 by Peter Kravitz, played an important role in nurturing new Scottish talent. Under the editorial direction of Marion Sinclair between 1990 and 1997, it proved particularly fleet-footed in spotting and publishing significant works by James Kelman, Janice Galloway, Liz Lochhead, Louise Walsh and Alexander McCall Smith, among others. Its role as cultural leader was recognised in 1993 with an award by the Sunday Times as best small publisher of the year, and with a special one-o≠ award by the Scottish Arts Council for its contribution to Scottish literary culture. A decade later Canongate Press would score a similar accolade by winning Publisher of the Year at the 2003 British Book Awards, demonstrating a continuing ability on the part of Scottish-based publishers to compete in national and international arenas. Subsidy support from the Scottish Arts Council from the late 1960s onwards enabled a range of cultural initiatives to flourish, including significant literary journals such as Akros, Cencrastus, Lallans and Lines Review. It also proved vital to reinvigorating Gaelic publishing in Scotland in the late 1960s. Earlier in the century, as Richard Cox points out, Gaelic publishing was focused on work drawing on Gaelic oral traditions – collections of poetry, songs, prose readings and folklore. Sporadic attempts were made to issue Gaelic fiction and novels, such as work by John MacCormick in the 1910s, or James Macleod in the 1920s. More recently, publishing subsidies from 1968 onwards via the Gaelic Books Council has stimulated more experimentation in Gaelic literary publishing. Though the sums awarded have been small, the e≠ect has been significant: in the first half of the twentieth century, four or five Gaelic titles were published in Scotland annually. Between 1968 and 1999, the number of Gaelic titles published tripled to circa fourteen titles per annum. Moves to institute dedicated Gaelic medium school education in Glasgow, Edinburgh and elsewhere in the late twentieth century has also played its part in maintaining interest in further Gaelic medium work. It remains to be seen how much more will be achieved in such areas of Scottish literary publishing culture in the future.

The Changing Face of the Publishing House: 1880–1980 Andrew Nash The closing years of the nineteenth century saw some important shifts in the structure of the publishing trade. The Marxist critic N. N. Feltes has written of this period as one of ‘radical transformation of the literary mode of production’ where a new structure emerged, one ‘suited to, demanded, and provided by the larger structures of emergent monopoly capitalism’ (78–9). The establishment of trade associations and the Society of Authors brought about the founding of the Net Book Agreement (NBA) and hastened changes in copyright legislation. Technological advances and increased paper production brought higher printing capacities, whilst reductions in the price of new books and the expansion of overseas markets also contributed to the growing rate of production. The Net Book Agreement came into force on 1 January 1900 and was drawn up by the Publishers Association (formed in 1896), the Society of Authors and the Associated Booksellers of Great Britain and Ireland (established in 1895 out of the London Booksellers Society). The NBA was a response to a crisis in retail bookselling. Price cutting, especially by libraries and second-hand dealers (who sold ex-library books that were barely second-hand) had driven many booksellers out of business. Retail bookselling appeared close to collapse, but whilst the impulse for the NBA came from booksellers, the initiative was taken by publishers (see Kingsford). The agreement was in e≠ect a consensual contract between publisher and bookseller. The publisher had the right (but not the obligation) to fix a price for every book published. The bookseller was then obliged to sell the book at not less than that price, in return for a trade discount. By fixing retail prices the NBA brought to an end an era of free trade in books. The first serious threat to the agreement was the so-called ‘Times Book War’. In 1905, in an e≠ort to boost flagging sales, The Times had 185

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set up a book club and a library. When nearly-new copies of books which had been circulated in the library began to be sold o≠ at greatly reduced prices, many publishers ceased to supply books. A long, protracted ‘war’ ended in The Times backing down and signing the NBA (see Kingsford). The NBA was revised in 1957 under the Restrictive Trade Practices Act but it continued to influence publisher–bookseller relations before it finally collapsed in 1995. The protection given to publishers and booksellers by the NBA stabilised the trade and contributed to a disinclination to experiment with many new books. Changes in copyright legislation added to this trend. Copyright issues preoccupied the book world in the closing decades of the nineteenth century. The issue of international copyright protection was one of the driving forces behind the establishment of the Society of Authors in 1884. International copyright law emerged from the Berne Convention of 1887, which established that a copyrighted book in any signatory state is also copyrighted in all the other signatory states under the same conditions. Harmonisation with America was a particularly important issue. Prior to the Chace Act of 1891 authors and publishers had no control over the circulation of books by British authors in the American market. A. & C. Black had enormous di∞culty controlling the unauthorised (but nevertheless legal) reprinting of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (Newth: 44–8). The Chace Act was protectionist legislation, designed to ensure that books copyrighted in America were typeset and printed there, but it a≠orded some relief to the grievances of British publishers and authors by ensuring that an authorised American edition was protected by legislation. Simon Nowell-Smith has suggested that the changes in American copyright law might have been one of the contributory factors behind the decline of the three-volume novel at the end of the century (82). The collapse of this form in the mid-1890s was only one aspect of the widespread reduction in the price of books. Reprints of old texts priced at 6d or 7d proliferated in the new century and soon put pressure on the market strength of the 6s novel. Scottish publishers were innovators in this regard. William Collins set the trend with the illustrated Pocket Classics, priced at 1s, inaugurated in 1903. The purchase of new German rotary presses made printing speeds faster and within two years fifty volumes had appeared. In 1906 alone overall sales exceeded 400,000 copies (Keir: 218–20). There was soon competition, from Dent, Oxford University Press and rival Scottish firm Nelsons, whose Sixpenny Classics eventually consisted of more than 400 volumes. Collins and Nelsons also developed another cheap venture: 7d reprints of copyright novels by living authors which had already been

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Figure 3.1 Popular edition of John Buchan Prester John, undated.

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published at standard prices. The two firms seem to have developed the idea simultaneously with the first volumes of both series appearing within three days of each other. New Nelson titles appeared each fortnight. For a time it looked as if the appearance of such cheap reprints would destroy the 6s novel as completely as the three-volume novel had been destroyed, but the real success of the form lay in its appeal to the book-buying purses of a newly literate audience, one that had not been used to purchasing its fiction at the higher price. Writing in the New Age, Arnold Bennett considered that ‘the tremendous supply of sevenpenny bound volumes of modern fiction, and of shilling bound volumes of modern belle-lettres (issued by Nelson and others), is producing a demand . . . making book-buyers where previously there were no book-buyers’ (18 Feb 1909. Reprinted in Bennett 1917: 107).

John Buchan, publisher Before he became famous as a novelist, John Buchan worked for the publishers Thomas Nelson & Sons. This was his main profession for eighteen years, interrupted by four years of propaganda work for the War O∞ce and Foreign O∞ce during the First World War (Smith 1965; Lownie). Tommy Nelson had been a friend from Oxford, and had asked Buchan in 1906 to work for his family firm as the London-based editor and literary advisor. Buchan spent almost a year in Edinburgh learning the ropes before settling in London at the Nelson’s Paternoster Row o∞ce. His role was to look out for new authors and to brief the sales team. He developed a new reprint series for Nelsons, the Sevenpennies, and chose the titles for these and the Sixpenny Classics, and the 1s and 2s series, always with an eye on raising standards and making the sales. His brief was to bring good modern fiction to an emerging public with higher literary standards. These were not particularly highly educated or well-o≠ people. Buchan’s democratic instincts were firmly on the side of the: people who are only able to a≠ord a few pence for a book, and want to buy rather than borrow . . . the new reading public . . . is an intelligent public, a serious public, which, if I were a great writer, I would far rather write for than for the bored ladies who get a weekly box from the library. (qtd in Smith 1965: 170) Works by H. G. Wells, George Douglas Brown, Mark Twain and Henry James adorned the Sevenpennies: non-fiction from the brothers Goncourt, Hilaire Belloc, Lord Rosebery and Joseph Conrad featured in the Nelson’s Library of General Literature (Smith 1965: 170).

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In 1907 Buchan took on the editorship of a Scottish cultural weekly, the Scottish Review, which Nelsons had bought as the Christian Leader. His high-brow approach did not retain readers of the former church weekly, and the paper folded after a year. Buchan also edited encyclopaedias for Nelson, rapidly learning Spanish for one of them, and travelled to the Nelson’s o∞ce in Paris in connection with the francophone ‘Collection Nelson’, to be printed at the Parkside works. Nelsons was unusual in having the capacity to print and bind the books it published, and outsourced these facilities to other publishers as well, including Uhlstein of Germany. When war broke out in August 1914, the principal concern of Buchan and the directors was how to keep the presses running and their sta≠ in work. Their continental business, on which they relied strongly, was cut o≠, and they expected an immediate drop in domestic sales. The two Nelson brothers were already into uniform, and the older managers, Buchan and George Brown, had a hasty brainstorming by post between London and Edinburgh on what they could bring out to catch the war mood.1 On 22 August the first issue of The War came out, their new weekly war magazine, with leaders by Buchan himself. He also wrote all twenty-four volumes of Nelson’s main success during the war, the Nelson’s History of the War (1915–19). As well as writing, Buchan’s hands-on editorial work extended to proofreading, caption-checking and keeping a sharp eye on sales and rival advertisements. The first seven months of the wartime Nelson’s correspondence shows a continual discussion between Buchan and Brown over the simultaneous production of The War and the History of the War. This rich mix of sales figures, advertising ideas, proofreading queries, cross-checking and distribution grumbles was carried by several letters a day from the London and Edinburgh o∞ces and Buchan’s home, often crossing each other, often with pencilled additions as the situation changed, or a telegram arrived. By October 1914 Nelsons was publishing two war histories: the lavish A General Sketch of the European War (1915, 1916) by Hilaire Belloc, and the cheaper Nelson’s History by Buchan himself. Later on it published Sir Edward Parrott’s The Children’s Story of the War (1915), Why Britain Went to War (1917) and Nelson’s Mapbook of the World-Wide War (1917). Supplementing these was Nelson’s Portfolio of War Pictures, published in parts from 1914 to 1915, a picture magazine of war photographs with 1

Thomas Nelson’s letters, Edinburgh University Library Special Collections: Gen. 1728, B/5/68, John Buchan to George Brown, 4 Aug. 1914; Gen. 1728, B/5/69, John Buchan to George Brown, 6 Aug. 1914; Gen. 1728, B/5/70, George Brown to John Buchan, 7 Aug. 1914.

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captions, touched up for emphasis and discreetly masking the faces of dead men with crude ‘newspapers’ of white ink. The War ran for twenty-nine weeks, ceasing publication on 6 March 1915: it had been struggling from early on. No daily newspaper would take it on as a supplement, a sure sign of an unsaleable commodity, and as early as 3 January 1915 George Brown wanted to stop publication. The reason given to the public for The War’s discontinuation in March was that it had served its purpose of keeping the printing presses in work (The War, 6 March 1915), but if The War had made money, Nelsons would probably have continued to publish it until the war ended. Nelson’s connection with Buchan brought it lucrative printing and publishing contracts for propaganda from the Foreign O∞ce, in translation as well as for the home market, and its own publications, on the whole, sold well. Buchan returned to Nelsons in 1919 but post-war shortages caused problems for the firm. Tommy Nelson, Buchan’s best friend, had been killed in 1917, and his brother Ian had a di≠erent management style. In 1921 George Brown resigned. Buchan continued as a director, and gave Nelsons preferential terms for cheap editions of the expanding list of his own bestselling novels. He developed new educational lines in literature and history, bringing in Sir Henry Newbolt as a co-editor and writer, but in 1929 he decided not to renew his contract with the firm, and resigned. Buchan’s connection with Nelsons as a talent scout had an enduring e≠ect in his role as an advisor and encourager of writers (Redley). A continuing pattern in remarks about his life is his encouragement of others in their writing, whether choosing titles, finding them a publisher, rewriting the plot or generally giving advice on pace, style and markets. His knowledge of how best-selling genres functioned was not informed just from his own experience as an author. Nelsons had trained his eye and his judgement to discern the tastes of the book-buying public Kate Macdonald

The market strength of the Sevenpennies was enhanced by changes in copyright law. The 1911 Copyright Act increased the value of literary property, firstly by introducing protection for new classes of work such as cinematograph productions, and secondly by extending the duration of post-mortem copyright from seven to fifty years. Copyrights became more valuable to publishers and executors, opening up new markets for cheap reprints like the Sevenpennies and also for collected editions. The various publishers of Stevenson’s texts, for example, came together with Lloyd Osbourne to draw enormous profits on an unprecedented number of editions in the first thirty years after Stevenson’s death (Nash 2003).

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The general contexts of trade organisation, retail maintenance and price restructuring contributed to the way Scottish publishers operated. The period 1880–1980 has generally been seen as one of decline in Scottish publishing, followed by a small, or fragile, revival at the end of the century (Glen 1999). The drift south to London that started in the nineteenth century seemed natural in the twentieth, as firms became eager to compete in international markets. To some commentators, this contributed to a ‘cultural vacuum in Scotland’ (McGowan). Certainly the period was one of change for the great Scottish publishers of the nineteenth century. The death of John Blackwood in 1879 marks a critical point in the history of the firm of Blackwood, one of the most famous Scottish publishing houses, ushering in a new, less confident era, characterised by family rifts and the retirement of key personnel. The famous Blackwood’s Magazine began to lose its readership and the long association with George Eliot came to an end with her death in 1880. The most recent historian of Blackwood notes a conservative viewpoint on literature and society in this period that contributed to the rejection of such writers as Shaw, Wells, Conan Doyle and Stevenson. Blackwoods fell into ‘a marginalized position as publisher of popular works for colonial and special service interests audiences’ (Finkelstein 2002: 5). Reprints of Eliot’s works remained a good source of profit but the intellectual capital of the firm declined. Some revival came in the form of David Storrar Meldrum, who entered the firm as literary advisor in 1894 and became London o∞ce manager in 1896. A friend of George Douglas Brown, Meldrum encouraged Blackwood to publish Joseph Conrad. It is too easy to read the history of Blackwood in terms of the decline of Scottish culture, however, and the firm’s targeting of the colonial audience at the end of the century was a shift in publishing policy that reflected the expansion of the world market for literature and books (Finkelstein 2002: 102–5). Ian Norrie notes that by the end of the century ‘the overseas markets had become so important that most leading publishers had already established o∞ces in New York and the then colonies’ (15). This was especially important for firms that specialised in educational publishing. Collins had a healthy market for books and stationery in Canada by the time it was made a dominion in 1867. In the 1870s agencies were established in India and New Zealand and a permanent warehouse and showroom in Sydney. A New Zealand branch was opened in 1888. Early in the new century travellers were sent to South America to study the book market in Argentina, Brazil, Peru and Chile (Keir: 217). Of all the major Scottish firms established in the nineteenth century, Collins was probably the most successful in the twentieth century. The

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firm also managed to expand and internationalise its outlook while managing to retain some of its cultural and institutional base in Scotland. Collins has been described as ‘ahead of its time’ and was a limited company as early as 1879 (Norrie: 30). Having begun as bookseller and stationer, and publisher to Thomas Chalmers, the firm expanded into educational and text-book publishing in addition to the main line of religious books. By the 1890s Collins’ ‘de facto monopoly of Bibleprinting in Scotland was virtually complete’ as sales boomed amidst the religious controversies of the period (Keir: 202). The expansion in educational publishing at the end of the century is an area where Collins mirrors the development of Nelson, discussed elsewhere in this volume. In the final decades of the century, Collins’ output began to diversify. Stationery was always a major part of the business and the first Collins diaries appeared in 1881. A new line in children’s books, illustrated throughout in colour, was launched in 1900 and included some of Andrew Lang’s fairy stories. There was also an expansion of infrastructure. Three new papermills were purchased and additional printing machinery installed in the Glasgow plant. Although Collins carried a London address and had opened a branch in Edinburgh in 1862, the main editorial and production operations were based in Glasgow until the end of the First World War. The move south was prompted by a change in policy. Rising costs and increasing competition from other firms had made the Sevenpennies unprofitable and in 1917 the firm made a dramatic turn by deciding for the first time to publish original fiction and poetry. This made a London o∞ce essential. Although the ‘rock-bottom’ of the firm’s business remained bibles, school books, works of reference, children’s books and stationery, a range of new fiction was published, including an especially successful list of detective fiction. The Crime Club, with Agatha Christie at its head, was started in 1930. Scottish writers, including James Barke, George Blake and Frederick Niven also found their way onto the list. Though a limited company, the Collins firm was run by the family for much of the century. One member, Sir Godfrey Collins, became an MP and was made Secretary of State for Scotland in 1932. Even with their editorial centre relocated to London, Collins kept their production base in Glasgow, which became known as the ‘Stock Control’. Eric de Bellaigue has summarised that in the 1970s ‘at its simplest, Collins were a Glasgow printing and publishing company that had diversified into London’. It could be argued that the division between Glasgow and London created a hierarchy of the firm’s intellectual capital, with Glasgow encompassing ‘the more humdrum schoolbooks, dictionaries, bibles, and children’s books, while London took the more glamorous

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trade publishing’ (de Bellaigue: 160). And de Bellaigue identifies the geographical division as one of the factors behind the boardroom splits which led to the severance of family control amidst the restructuring of the company in the 1980s. Philip Ziegler, editor-in-chief at the time, summarised this point with the words: ‘It’s hard when the tail starts to outgrow the dog’ (qtd in de Bellaigue: 160). Some of the other important Scottish-based publishers from the nineteenth century also continued to operate from Edinburgh or Glasgow as well as London. W. & R. Chambers were a major force in reference and educational publishing after 1880 and with Chambers’s Journal had what was still a significant fiction-carrying magazine. Arthur Conan Doyle’s first published work ‘The Mystery of Sasassa Valley’, appeared in the Journal in 1879. The Journal continued until the 1950s and the famous Chambers Encyclopaedia remained under the firm’s ownership until 1966. Blackie reoriented themselves from religious books to educational and juvenile markets, responding to the e≠ect of the Education Acts of the 1870s. An enormous number of children’s books at a wide variety of prices and in a range of formats were published in the final decades of the century (Blackie 1959: 32–44). The educational market expanded further in the new century and Blackie did not much expand their output, ‘the directors quietly pursuing their policy of issuing children’s books for the reward and educational markets and technical volumes on various subjects’ (Norrie: 120). The firm had a London branch from 1837, and in the 1880s and 1890s only Scotland, Ireland and North America were supplied direct from Glasgow. In 1925, however, Blackie began building an entirely new factory just outside Glasgow in Bishopbriggs. The printing and binding works were sold to Collins in 1966. Other famous Scottish publishers from the nineteenth century proved less innovative and less successful, though their once-famous names remained an essential part of British publishing. A publisher’s identity was often built around a back list. For much of the nineteenth century, the Edinburgh firm of A. & C. Black coasted along on editions of Scott – the copyrights in which they had purchased in 1851 – and profits from the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Although they put out R. B. Cunninghame Graham’s first two published books, the firm was not generally productive in issuing new literature of this period. During 1875–88 a monumental ninth edition of the Britannica was issued – one of the greatest achievements in Scottish publishing of its, or any other period. Among the contributors were William Robertson Smith (discussed later in this volume) – whose controversial entry on the Bible

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convulsed the Scottish churches – and the young J. G. Frazer, later to take the intellectual world by storm with his great work of anthropology The Golden Bough. In 1889, one year after the Britannica was issued, the firm moved its o∞ces from Edinburgh to London, believing that the Britannica ‘could be better administered from the centre of the publishing trade, and that if the firm remained in the North it would be in danger of running down’ (Newth: 50). The announcement was seen by the Scottish press as emblematic of the shift in power in the publishing world. When the publishing and selling of the Britannica was ceded to The Times and the American firm of James Clarke & Co. in the closing years of the century, that shift seemed to be confirmed (Newth: 64–9). Frazer’s The Golden Bough, we might note in passing, was published in London by Macmillan. Despite its move to London, Black’s printing operation remained in Edinburgh, and to a considerable extent Edinburgh remained the leading printing centre in Britain. Duncan Glen records that ‘The Edinburgh printing industry was at its most prosperous in the first decade of this century, but was losing work to printers nearer to London before 1914, and the war, with the following slump in trade, dealt heavy blows’ (1999: 108). Nevertheless, throughout much of the twentieth century the Edinburgh firms of T. & A. Constable and R. & R. Clark remained the printers of choice for all publishing firms throughout Britain. The First World War brought a shortage of raw materials, especially paper, depleted sta≠ and increased costs of manufacture, all of which contributed to rising prices and a fall in the number of new titles and new editions (see Bonham-Carter 1984: 24 for relevant figures). For publishers like Nelson, who relied strongly on overseas markets, the conditions were hard. Peace brought a new movement towards cheaper-priced books amidst what has been identified as a period of commercialisation in the book trade. Fiction came to be marketed more in the form of commodities, and as Joseph McAleer notes, ‘[T]he major publishers of popular fiction in this period included some of the most respectable “quality” houses’ (48). Once again Collins illustrates the trend. In addition to their quality list of literary novels, which included posthumous works by Henry James and notable women writers such as Vita Sackville West, Rose Macaulay, Winifred Holtby and Rosamond Lehmann, Collins became, along with Mills & Boon, the principal publishers of romance fiction. The firm also issued Westerns, thrillers and, as already noted, the Crime Club which became the canonical face of detective fiction. The most successful Scottish publishing firm of the first half of the twentieth century was undoubtedly D. C. Thomson. Known as ‘the

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newspaper Mussolini of Dundee’, this institution of popular culture has received a bad press, largely because of the moralising tone of its publications and its reactionary politics – a ban was imposed upon trade unions (McAleer: 170). Thomson merged with the rival Dundee newspaper firm of John Leng in 1906, taking a two-thirds control. The companies continued to publish separately until the 1930s when the list became Thomson-Leng Publications. With a huge following in Scotland, the Leng papers The People’s Friend and The People’s Journal existed alongside women’s magazines. Large quantities of popular fiction were published serially and in volume form. The Thomson side of the operation exploited the popular market for boys’ magazines and concentrated on ‘penetrating the market south of the Tweed’ (McAleer: 164). The firm’s provincial base was beneficial in landing a stronger market share than London competitors in Scotland and the northern regions of England. By 1950 Thomson was the largest publisher of magazines outside London and Joseph McAleer argues that the firm ‘stands as the best example of the type of magazines publisher which dominated the popular press in Britain earlier this century: shrewd, paternalistic, conservative, and moralizing’ (McAleer: 204). Thomson’s ban on trade unions was a response to the industrial threat of the 1920s. In the post-war period the Publishers Association increasingly came into contact with rival trade unions. The first two decades of the twentieth century saw trade organisation in all areas of the book world, but the trade was not, comparatively speaking, greatly a≠ected by the strikes of the period. Greater co-operation between di≠erent parts of the trade brought about initiatives such as the National Book Council (afterwards the National Book League) formed in 1925. Supported and financed by publishers and booksellers it promoted the organisation of exhibitions, book weeks and other such events. A ‘joint committee’ of publishers and booksellers met in 1927–8 and 1932 to improve organisation of the trade (Sanders). The depression of the 1930s did not a≠ect the book trade as severely as other areas of the economy, in spite of the impediments to foreign business. This was a period of innovation in the book world. The introduction of book tokens was a further indication of the integration between publishers and booksellers, as was the emergence of book clubs, especially the Book Society in 1929 and the Reader’s Union in 1937. The publishing industry was threatened by, but ultimately made use of, the rise of other media. Author and publisher took proceeds from film adaptations of novels and a special ‘film tie-in’ edition of a book

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would often be printed with a still from the movie on the front cover. Evidence suggests that reading was not unduly a≠ected by the competition of cinema and radio and that sales of books may well have increased as a result (Holmes and Rix). The Second World War brought severe restrictions on materials and the rising costs and prices continued into peacetime. The biggest factor was paper rationing which was enforced from 1940 to 1949. Escalating prices meant that many important books went out of print for the duration of the war and longer (Norrie: 85). In 1939, 30 per cent of home-produced books were sent abroad but the overseas market contracted partially as a result of the e≠ects of the war and of the independence of former colonies. Nevertheless, publishers who traditionally sold in colonial markets, such as Nelson, benefited from the rising demand for educational books (Yglesias: 381–4; McCleery 2006b: xxi). In the 1930s came the revolutionary Penguins – 6d paperback reprints of recently-published books. The cheap price, the uniform binding, the e≠ective use of branding and the innovative marketing techniques all had a massive e≠ect on the direction of British publishing and bookselling after the war. Paperback publishing did not revolutionise the book trade overnight, however. In 1963 Tony Godwin wrote: ‘[P]aperbacks were still no more than a minor sideline in 1948, a promising trend in 1954. By 1960 they had come to be recognised as the most dynamic factor in the publishing world’ (Bonham-Carter 1984: 94). At the beginning of 1960, fewer than 6,000 paperback titles were available; ten years later there were 37,000; by 1975, 30 per cent of all new titles were published in paperback; and by the end of the century the figure had risen to 60 per cent. As Joseph McAleer notes, what made mass paperback publishing feasible was the ‘creation of consortia which could underwrite the considerable costs of production and marketing’ (59–60). In the 1960s, in addition to having their own paperback imprint, Collins ran Pan books with Macmillan and Hodder & Stoughton. In 1962 Pan had 14 per cent of the trade in paperbacks and sold an estimated 10 million paperbacks a year (Findlater: 294). A basic fact about paperbacks is that they are cheaper than hardbacks not because their covers are softer but because their print runs are longer. The main revolution of Penguin was not in format but in target of readership. Britain was gradually being transformed – at last – into a book-buying culture. In spite of the expansion of paperback publishing, however, public libraries remained the main market for several types of book – fiction in particular – so much so that when libraries

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began to cut back on fiction purchases amidst the depression of the 1970s it prompted debate amongst authors and critics over demands for Public Lending Rights and the future of the ‘serious’ novel (Sutherland). By 1950 most publishers were independently owned, as private limited companies. Scottish houses that had been set up in the inter-war period were soon absorbed by larger houses. The Porpoise Press, founded in 1922, were taken over by Faber & Faber in 1930, although the imprint remained in use until 1939 (McCleery 1988). In the final third of the twentieth century, Scottish houses were a≠ected by the shifting trends in ownership. The observation that by the midtwentieth century ‘indigenous and independent Scottish publishing was in partial decline’ because of the gradual takeover by multinationals is one that applies to the publishing trade in general, and is a reflection on changes in the British publishing industry as much as events in Scotland (McGowan: 217). One by one the larger Scottish publishing houses were bought up. Nelsons was acquired in the 1960s by the growing empire of Roy Thomson and became part of the International Thompson Group in 1983. Pearson acquired Oliver & Boyd in 1962 and the Edinburgh medical publisher E. & S. Livingstone in 1960. W. & R. Chambers sold its famous encyclopaedia, by lease, to Robert Maxwell’s Buckingham Press in 1966 (Norrie: 153). A. & C. Black, who had become a limited company in 1914 and gone public in 1965, severed its material links with Scotland when it moved its trade department and warehouse to Cambridgeshire in 1975. In 2000 the company was sold to Bloomsbury. Again, the case of Collins provides the best witness to the patterns. The firm’s ‘protracted slide into bondage’ can be traced to 1979 when the final links with the Collins family were severed. Having remained under family control for 162 years Collins had become ‘the largest independent publishing house in Britain while still under family control’ (de Bellaigue: 158). The economic crisis of the 1970s hit all areas of the industry, but a firm like Collins, with an investment in production and a large export business, was especially hard hit. In 1977 Collins completed the transfer of their distribution centre to Bishopbriggs, a costly venture designed to increase production capacity (de Bellaigue: 163). The same year there was a 40 per cent drop in profits. The boardroom battles of the 1980s and the narrative of events whereby Collins first resisted a takeover bid from Rupert Murdoch’s New International, then became a partner in the new enterprise that emerged from the purchase by News International of Harper Row, and finally in 1989 were taken over by Murdoch, are documented by Eric de

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Figure 3.2 Jamie Byng.

Bellaigue (168≠.). The fate of Collins is certainly characteristic of that of many established British publishing houses in the 1980s. The takeovers and mergers did not prevent a discernible revival in Scottish publishing in the 1980s and 1990s. Academic Publishing, which had developed in the post-war period, remained strong. Edinburgh University Press published its first titles in 1948 and became an important outlet for Scottish historical scholarship. G. E. Davie’s The Democratic Intellect, one of the most influential titles in Scottish culture, was issued by the press in 1961. Aberdeen University Press emerged as a publisher again in 1978 after becoming a subsidiary of Robert Maxwell’s Pergamon Press. The development of Polygon, which began as a small imprint founded by students at Edinburgh University and was later acquired by Edinburgh University Press; and the appearance of academic publishers such as John Donald and Tuckwell ensured vital institutional support for the study of Scottish literature and history as well as publication of new fiction and poetry. In a more commercial vein, both Mainstream and Canongate have retained their status as leading independent publishers.

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Jamie Byng, publisher Jamie Byng, publisher of Canongate, is an accidental publisher: he came into the profession through a love of books and lack of career and, in doing so, helped to revitalise Canongate and publishing in Scotland generally. He had joined Canongate in 1992 for unpaid work experience. This was a di∞cult period for the company, as it attempted to re-establish its independence in the wake of the collapse of its parent Musterlin in 1990, and receivership threatened. Byng was instrumental in raising su∞cient capital to buy out Canongate in 1994. His very background, giving direct and indirect access to sources of funding, and an outgoing, unconventional and non-parochial perspective assisted in overcoming the two endemic weaknesses of the company that had made it vulnerable in the 1980s, undercapitalisation and under-investment in marketing its publications outside Scotland. Jamie Byng strengthened Canongate by making them less a Scottish publisher and more a publisher based in Edinburgh. This contrasted with their previous list: the Canongate Classics from 1984 had built up an impressive back list in reprinting the standard, and recovering the ‘lost’ canon of Scottish literature; Canongate Kelpies represented the only available series of reprint and original Scottish fiction for children; and Alasdair Gray’s Lanark: A Life in Four Books appeared for the first time in the UK in 1981 under the Canongate imprint. Canongate allowed Gray the artistic freedom to have the book presented according to his wishes; he illustrated and designed the jacket and pages himself and gave the book a distinctiveness that contributed to its subsequent success as hardback and then paperback. However, Canongate did not have access at the time to large reserves and could not a≠ord to o≠er an appropriate advance for Gray’s second work. Gray took the work to Jonathan Cape. The same pattern was repeated with the success of Charles Palliser’s Victorian pastiche, The Quincunx. When Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, published by Canongate, won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 2002, it provided an immediate financial boost to the company of about £2m and a great deal in terms of reputation and recognition. Martel represented a movement in the opposite direction to Gray: his first two books had been published by Faber & Faber but he was so impressed by Byng’s enthusiasm, as well as his ability to match Faber’s £15,000 advance, that he took the work to Canongate. Byng also published in 2002 The Crimson Petal and the Rose by Michel Faber (no relation), another Victorian pastiche that became an international bestseller. However, unlike Palliser and the earlier incarnation of Canongate, Faber has remained with Byng’s company, content that his work is being marketed e≠ectively across twenty-eight countries in the company of a list of international authors. These include the Dalai Lama, Louis de Bernières

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Figure 3.3 Yann Martel, Edinburgh, 2002.

and Doris Lessing, all of whom contributed Introductions to the Canongate Pocket Canons, reprints of the individual books of the Authorised Version of the Bible. This series, first issued in 1999, was a triumph of Byng’s marketing and branding abilities; it seemed to be repeated with the appearance of the first volumes in the Canongate Myths from 2005, a series of retellings by noted authors including Margaret Atwood and Alexander McCall Smith. Byng perceives himself to be on a mission to bring fresh, original writing to the reader and not to preserve and perpetuate literature labelled solely as

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Scottish. It is the inventiveness and style of Louise Welsh that has made her a Canongate author rather than her provenance. Kevin Williamson, editor of the Rebel Inc. imprint brought initially under the Canongate umbrella, left because he thought it had become ‘no longer a Scottish company’, particularly after a proposed merger with US-based Grove Atlantic in late 2000. Grove Atlantic was to buy a controlling interest in Canongate and, even though this deal did not go through, it did go on to distribute Canongate titles in the USA. Byng’s enthusiasm for Black American culture had earlier led to his establishment of the Payback Press within the Canongate structure to reprint writers such as Chester Himes and to publish new voices such as Patience Agbabi. Kevin Williamson had founded Rebel Inc. in 1992 as an anti-establishment magazine, publishing writers such as Alan Warner and Irvine Welsh. Indeed, the first edition contained an initial extract from the latter’s Trainspotting. The success of the magazine, and the existence of such a dynamic group of writers led to Williamson setting up the Rebel Inc. imprint within Byng’s Canongate in 1996. The first publication, issued in October of that year, was Children of Albion Rovers, a compendium of six novellas including further work by Warner and Welsh. In addition to publishing these new and distinctive writers from Edinburgh (and Leith), the imprint also issued works by other writers who formed part of the ‘counterculture’: William Burroughs, Howard Marks and Charles Bukowski. On Williamson’s departure from Canongate, the imprint was preserved but many of the titles were absorbed within the general Canongate list. The strength at the heart of Canongate that Jamie Byng represents brings with it risks as well. The pursuit of personal passions such as Payback Press may distract from the proven areas of success such as contemporary fiction. The failure of working relationships may be a weakness of a company built around one person: the acrimonious split with Kevin Williamson; the loss of Judy Moir as editorial director and her subsequent move to Penguin; and the failure of the proposed merger with the US-based Grove Atlantic. At the time of writing (August 2006), David Graham, who had seemed to outsiders to balance Byng’s Branson-like flair for brand marketing with his more thorough business acumen and no less powerful personality, had left amicably to join Granta, a major rival in the field of contemporary fiction. Byng now has to rely on a closer circle of advisers, his stepfather and his ex-wife’s father, for that balance. All in all, his achievement has been remarkable over such a relatively short period; he has added creative energy to publishing in Scotland and raised its eyes beyond Hadrian’s Wall. Alistair McCleery

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Figure 3.4 Alasdair Gray.

But the modern book world is never standing still. In recent years Polygon, John Donald and Tuckwell have all been acquired by Birlinn. The takeover of the bookseller James Thin led not only to the disappearance of a famous name in Scottish bookselling but the selling o≠ the firm’s publishing concern the Mercat Press. In 2005 the Random House group took a 50 per cent holding in Mainstream which, in a press statement, promised to remain ‘Edinburgh-based and Scottish in soul’ (http://www.mainstreampublishing.com/2005/news_138.html). The next chapter of the history of Scottish publishing and bookselling remains uncertain.

Literary Publishing: 1880–1914 Andrew Nash Ambition, and passion, and power Come out of the north and the west, Every year, every day, every hour, Into Fleet Street to fashion their best: They would shape what is noble and wise; They must live by a tra∞c in lies. (John Davidson, ‘New Years Day’, Fleet Street Eclogues, 1893) The career of John Davidson might be seen as the perfect illustration of the well-worn diagnosis of the failure of late-Victorian Scottish literature. Unsupported by a native culture, driven to London in search of recognition and money, and meeting there a resistance to anything Scottish, Davidson’s acute perception of modern urban life was transferred from Scotland to England and absorbed into a di≠erent tradition. For long, the prevailing view of Scottish literature at the end of the century was precisely this. The absence of indigenous cultural traditions drove writers away from Scotland where they erected a false ‘Kailyard’ tradition divorced from the actualities of Scottish life. Much recent criticism has modified this view. A less politicised reading of the achievements of the ‘Anglo-Scots’, together with research into the Scottish press and the activities of the ‘first Scottish Renaissance’ led by Patrick Geddes, has opened up the debate. The following survey attempts to show that literary publishing in this period was supported both by significant forces of indigenous cultural production in Scotland and by the wider British market. By 1880 the market for books was becoming increasingly international. A novel published by a firm whose main o∞ce was in London, Edinburgh, or any other major city, would be circulated throughout 203

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Britain as a whole, as well as the colonies (chief of which was the Australian market). In 1886 Margaret Oliphant published three novels in volume form. The first was with William Blackwood & Sons, one of the leading Scottish publishers of the nineteenth century, who had opened a London o∞ce in 1840 (see Finkelstein 2002). The second was through the Glasgow publisher James Maclehose & Sons, a publishing and bookselling firm which from 1885 was run by two brothers who later acquired Glasgow University Press, previously owned by their uncle Robert MacLehose (MacLehose). The third was with the London firm of Macmillan. Each would have circulated in the same markets and the range of publishers indicates how Oliphant was able to move between English-based and Scottish-based publishers without fearing that her audience would be lost. By 1886 Oliphant was an established novelist and critic. Her long association with Blackwoods has been well documented, but in her later career she had a close working relationship with Macmillan as well, as writer and occasional advisor and manuscript reader (Worth). The family firm of Macmillan had Scottish origins but although it later published J. G. Frazer’s The Golden Bough it did not actively pursue Scottish writers from its bases in London and New York (Morgan). Nevertheless, in 1890 the firm published Oliphant’s Kirsteen – ‘a peculiarly Scottish story’ (Williams: 284) – in its Magazine and in three volumes, as well as her book on Royal Edinburgh. In the same year Blackwood issued The Duke’s Daughter, a novel set in London. These trends show how London-based publishers could be as receptive to stories set in Scotland as might a Scottish-based publisher with a long-standing association with Scottish literature. The same is true at the end of the period under scrutiny. Violet Jacob’s novels and volumes of poetry were mostly published in London by Heinemann and John Murray, the latter, like Macmillan, being a firm with Scottish origins. By the 1880s the three-volume novel was close to extinction, although it remained the pre-eminent mode of fiction publishing until the mid-1890s. The form supported the work of the most popular Victorian Scottish novelist, William Black, who became known as ‘the darling of the lending libraries’. Black’s Highland novels were critically acclaimed and he continued his successful formula until his death in 1898. Highland Cousins (1894) was his last three-volume novel, but this was followed by two further novels published in the new standard format of one volume priced at 6s. The latter phase of Black’s career also exemplifies changes in the market for serial fiction. In the 1880s the premier fiction-carrying magazines of mid-century, such as the Cornhill, Temple Bar and

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Blackwood’s, were still important sites of publication. Blackwood’s strategy, like Macmillan’s, had generally been to link serial publication rights in their magazine with subsequent book rights. Both firms published several of Oliphant’s novels in this way. The end of the century brought a decline in such ‘predictable publishing patterns’ as newer weekly and monthly periodicals and, increasingly, newspapers became the main market for serial fiction (Finkelstein 2002: 14). Cheap periodicals aimed at the ‘quarter-educated’, such as Tit Bits, Pearson’s Weekly and T. P.’s Weekly, dominated the market and contributed to the emerging split between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture (Keating: 35≠.). There was also a rise in the number of illustrated magazines. When the Illustrated London News serialised Black’s Yolande in 1883 it marked that paper’s return to the serial market. In subsequent years it and other 6d illustrated weeklies, such as the Graphic, began to dominate the market, wresting power from the 1s literary monthlies mentioned above and imposing upon authors a demand for shorter serials. Stevenson’s ‘The Beach of Falesa’ first appeared in the Illustrated London News. The expansion of the popular press brought a renewed demand for short stories, which writers like Stevenson and J. M. Barrie were able to exploit.

R. L. Stevenson, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was written at Skerryvore, his home in Bournemouth, in the autumn of 1885 and published by Longman in January 1886. Composition took about six weeks, starting about 16 September and ending on 28 October (Swearingen: 99). Negotiations with the publisher occupied the next week, and printing took place immediately after, with the last of the second proofs returned around 22 November, just short of ten weeks from when Stevenson had started writing (Stevenson, Letters V: 216). He had written a short draft in three days, burnt it after criticisms from his wife, and possibly wrote another short draft after that. He then rewrote everything in an almost full version that breaks o≠ just before the end, and then rewrote everything again in the final reworked manuscript for the printer (for a full account of the story of composition, see Dury 2004). Stevenson had told his doctor that he was looking for an idea for a ‘shilling shocker’, and the tale was eventually sold in a 1s volume, as The Scotsman of 25 February 1886 points out: ‘It is got up in a form which is a favourite with railway publishers and railway travellers.’ However, the manuscript was originally sent to Longman’s Magazine in late 1885 for

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pre-Christmas magazine serialisation. Stevenson had already published for the ‘Christmas story’ market of chilling supernatural tales: ‘The Body Snatcher’ had been published in the 1884 Pall Mall Christmas Extra, and sensationally advertised in London by lines of sandwich men; ‘Olalla’ was published in the 1885 Christmas number of The Court and Society Review; ‘Markheim’, originally intended for the 1884 Pall Mall Christmas Extra, was published in Unwin’s 1885 Christmas miscellany entitled The Broken Shaft; and ‘The Misadventures of John Nicholson. A Christmas Story’ was published in 1887 in Cassell’s Christmas Annual Yule Tide. The reason for preferring magazine publication was Stevenson’s urgent need for ready money to pay debts: a year of ill-health had prevented him from working for long periods and had also led to medical bills. Magazine contributions were paid for on delivery, while income from a book would mainly come from later royalties. After a report from his reader, Andrew Lang, Charles Longman decided that the story was more suited for separate publication, though still in the pre-Christmas period: I read the story with intense interest, and could not put it down till I had finished it. Naturally I regarded it as an admirable story for the magazine, but it would have been necessary to divide it into two or more parts, and I thought that it was a tale which should be read straight through not at an interval of a month. I accordingly wrote to Stevenson asking him if I might publish it complete as a shilling book instead of running it through the magazine. He wrote back that he would have no objection, but that the lack of ready cash was of importance to him and that he knew I should pay him so much at once if it appeared in the magazine, whereas if it was issued separately it might fail & bring him in nothing. This di∞culty was early met by making him an advance payment on account of royalties.2 Stevenson announces the completion of the text in a letter of 28 October, and Charles Longman acknowledges receipt of it on 31 October. A contract was signed on 3 November; a cheque for the agreed advance payment was dated 6 November; and on 12 November Stevenson was already correcting proofs. According to the contract, Stevenson was to receive one-sixth of the cover price: 2d for the shilling paper cover edition, 3d for the clothbound one. Longman advanced royalties on the first 10,000 copies, that is, £83 6s. 8d; royalties on overseas sales were to be split half-and-half between publisher and author. 2

NLS MS 9895, fols 111–12.

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This final clause was to cause some problems. As a way of thanking them for their good work on A Child’s Garden of Verses, Stevenson asked Longman to o≠er the book to Charles Scribner’s Sons; a set of uncorrected proofs was sent to New York on 17 November, along with a proposal for an American edition. Longman’s New York agent made an (untraced) agreement on 16 December, which apparently mentioned a one-o≠ payment of £20 to Longman for advanced sheets from which to set up the text in New York and then royalty payments of 10 per cent to the author alone, in contradiction of the London contract. The misunderstanding is clearly due to the di∞culties of co-ordinating a≠airs with eleven days necessary for mail to cross the Atlantic. Longman used the 1866 transatlantic cable twice, but only for short messages of four and five words: to stop pre-Christmas publication and to set 1 January as publication day. At the end of November with the printing done, Longman decided to postpone publication to the New Year; and the last number of the date 1885 on the paper cover was neatly changed in pen to ‘6’. Charles Longman explains that was due to competition for other Christmas publications already on the market: ‘The little book was printed, but when it was ready the bookstalls were already full of Christmas numbers etc., and the trade would not look at it. We therefore withdrew it till after Christmas’ (Balfour: 14). However, in a letter to Scribner’s of 28 November he says it is due to ‘the pressure of business in other directions’. With publication postponed Longman could now o≠er Scribner’s ‘simultaneous publication’, in order to give the latter a lead over the inevitable American pirate editions, and in the end the New York edition was published on 5 January 1886, four days before publication in London. (The USA repeatedly refused to recognise international copyright protection until the Chace Act of 1891, and this did not enter into e≠ect until after Stevenson’s death [cf. Feltes 1993: 95–6]. The first US pirate edition was published on 1 February 1886.) The two London editions were only distinguished by their cover: bu≠coloured paper cover with crude red and blue decorations for 1s, and salmon-coloured cloth over boards and decorative endpapers for 6d extra. The typesetting was spread out to make a reasonable volume, a point commented on by The Times reviewer who talks of ‘this sparsely-printed little shilling volume’. The parallel New York editions were more carefully prepared and were distinct in both covers and paper used for the pages: a cheap version in yellow paper wrappers at 25c, and a hardcover in olive-green cloth with gilded lettering and top edge of pages, printed on thicker wove paper for $1. The first Longman print run of 10,000 (possibly all in paper wrappers) was recorded as December 1885; of the second printing of the same number

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of copies in January 1886 – 1,000 were probably in cloth, since only 9,000 paper wrappers were printed. By Longmans’ account’s day on 1 June, they had produced, in seven printings, a total of 43,000 copies, 2,200 of which were in cloth, and of which they had sold 39,572 – sales considered ‘enormous’ by Book-lore (June: 1886) (Pierce 1999: 156). Sales had soon passed the number corresponding to the advance payments, and Longman sent Stevenson further royalty cheques in February, April and June for a total of £255 7s. By his death, Stevenson had earned £690 from the Longman editions. In the following year to June 1887, Longmans printed a further 9,000 (reaching the ‘Eleventh Edition’) and sold almost 11,000. Sales then quietened down, apart from a secondary peak in printing and sales in the year to June 1889: the 18,000 sold in that year were possibly the result of a bulk purchase. Sales revived with Stevenson’s death in 1894, at which date Longman also began producing a range of versions: Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde with Other Fables (1896) selling at 6s, an edition in the ‘Silver Library’ (1896); a ‘Special Edition’ (1901) at 5s; and in 1907 editions in the Pocket Library at 2s (cloth), and 3s (leather). The first New York printing was of 3,000 in paper and 1,250 in cloth (McKay: 151); almost 20,000 had been sold by Scribner by April 1886, and by 1887 40,000 had been printed. At the same time numerous cheaper pirate editions were being published (at least twenty-one before 1900) and Graham Balfour estimates total North America sales before the turn of the century as a quarter of a million (Balfour: 14). Scribners started paying royalties directly to Stevenson according to their understanding of the contract. Then as the result of an enquiry made on 9 May 1887, Longmans learned about the mix-up; Charles Scribner then paid Longman’s royalties for the latest period only, which was divided in two with the author. This led Stevenson, ever the gentleman, to ask for payment information from Scribners in order to pay Longmans their share of the earlier payments, a decision that Charles Scribner found di∞cult to understand (Stevenson, Letters II: 52). Charles Longman says that a favourable review in The Times on 25 January 1886 was an important influence in sales, though obviously this did not a≠ect US sales, that were equally high. Both British and North American press reviewers praised Stevenson’s style and the story’s originality and unexpected resolution. Attention was directed to its moral message, with some mention, especially in the US, of possible psychological interpretation, though some commentators underlined the di∞culty of deciding what the moral might be. Longmans advertised the book in the January 1886 issue of Longman’s Magazine in the ‘Popular Novels’ section, though only towards the bottom

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of the tenth page of advertisements with no special prominence. Emphasis was given to its shocking character: from its first January listing in The Publishers’ Circular it was presented as ‘a sensational tale’; from 27 February the regular advertisement in the Athenaeum included a quotation from the Academy characterising the tale as ‘weirdly imaginative’, and on 3 April this was joined by comments from the Whitehall Review and the Graphic that emphasised the frightening nature of the tale: ‘not to be recommended to readers of a nervous temperament, seated in lonely rooms, during the small hours of the night’. The work was parodied in Punch on 6 February and the story used for a theatrical satire in May. A lady correspondent in The Court and Society Review in early 1886 says that ‘ “Have you read Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde?” is the first question a person asks you now after he has taken you in to dinner.’3 The popularity of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was a turning point in Stevenson’s career, as he noticed when he arrived in New York in September 1887: eight years before, he had arrived as a sick and ignored ‘amateur emigrant’, now he was met by scores of reporters wanting to interview the author of Jekyll and Hyde and by publishers o≠ering him unheard-of sums for serial publications. The ex-bohemian author of ‘An Apology for Idlers’ was not sure what to make of his involvement in the mighty mechanisms of the market: already in January 1886 he had compared writers to prostitutes in their profession of providing pleasure for payment (Stevenson, Letters V: 171). Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, with its references to many forms of authentic and inauthentic writing, its association of cheap literature and prostitutes in Soho and its brief imitations of sensational journalism, romantic fiction and overdecorated prose, has been seen as an ‘unconscious allegory’ about the commercialisation of literature and Stevenson’s own divided attitude towards the market (Brantlinger; Arata). Linda Dryden and Richard Dury

An earlier Black novel typifies another trend in the serial market. Sunrise (1880–1) was probably the last novel to be issued in monthly parts, the form that had proved so profitable to Dickens. At the same time, however, it also appeared serially in the She∞eld Weekly Independent. The expansion of the newspaper market gave Black a renewed outlet for his fiction. In 1889 he was paid £1,000 for a serial 3

Clipping in Stevenson’s Mother’s Scrapbook vol. 3, Stevenson Cottage, Saranac Lake, NY; this together with Scrapbook vol. 2 in the Stevenson House, Monterey, contains clippings of fortysix early reviews of the book.

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by Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, a penny publication aimed at the lower-middle working classes. Lloyd’s ‘became the first newspaper in the world to reach a sale of a million’ (Williams 1957: 103). In 1891 Donald Ross of Heimra was serialised in the Wednesday supplement of the Daily Chronicle, a cheap metropolitan paper. Most significantly of all, Black benefited from the emerging practice of syndication. From the 1870s, Tillotson’s Fiction Bureau altered the pattern of serial fiction by purchasing rights in novels and then leasing them out to a range of provincial newspapers (see Law 2000). Black received £850 from Tillotson’s for the serial rights of Highland Cousins. In this format his fiction reached a far wider audience than it did in volume form. Scotland had led the way in the practice of serialising full-length novels in newspapers from the mid-1850s. William Donaldson’s important study of newspaper fiction, Popular Literature in Victorian Scotland, deals mainly with the mid-century but the tradition of locallyproduced serial fiction in Scottish newspapers continued into the twentieth century. Chief among the author/editors was David Pae, whom Donaldson considers ‘the most widely read author of fiction in Victorian Scotland’ (77). From 1870 to 1884, Pae was editor of the Dundee literary miscellany the People’s Friend (founded in 1869) and many of his novels were serialised in the paper. Most of his scores of serials did not find their way to book publication, although it is noticeable that three of his later serials from the 1880s were issued in volume form, a period when the previously distinct markets of newspaper and book were coming together. The Glasgow newspapers were also productive in producing serial novels, and some of these were by leading writers of the day. In the 1870s the Glasgow Weekly Herald published, along with anonymous serials by local authors, novels by Black and George MacDonald which were also issued in metropolitan magazines and published in volume form. Nor were the Glasgow papers exclusively interested in Scottish fiction. In 1879–80 the Herald serialised George Meredith’s The Egoist, an indication that the Scottish serial market formed part of the wider British national market in this period. Donaldson confirms that by the 1880s, ‘most Scots papers publishing fiction were carrying a mixture of locally-produced and nationally syndicated material supplied by agencies’ (96). S. R. Crockett’s The Grey Man (1896) appeared in the Mail, as well as the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle, the Sydney Mail and the metropolitan magazine, the Graphic. The vibrancy of the Scottish newspaper market meant that although Scotland lacked a strong culture of indigenous book production, popular Scottish literature remained a powerful force in cultural life. In his

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anthology of Scots prose from the ‘Vernacular Revival’ William Donaldson reprints several examples of fiction and non-fiction published in local Scottish newspapers into the twentieth century that show a vigorous culture of vernacular prose (1989). For Donaldson, this amounts to ‘an independent Scottish literary market’ written, published and read in Scotland (Donaldson 1989: 214). Local publishing houses also supported the work of Scottish writers. Oliphant & Co. (later Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier) had o∞ces in Edinburgh and London, and specialised in children’s books and books for social or religious improvement. In the 1880s they issued a number of works of regional (usually rural) Scottish life, by such authors as Annie S. Swan, Robina F. Hardy and John Strathesk, whose Bits from Blinkbonny (1882), a tale of Scottish village life in the 1840s, was particularly successful. After the success of Ian Maclaren, the firm issued many more ‘Kailyard’ books, such as Fergus Mackenzie’s Sprays of Northern Pine (1897). Oliphant & Co. issued reprints of their large back list at a range of prices, going as low as 1s for Hardy’s adult books and 6d for her children’s stories. Swan’s books appeared in a variety of di≠erent formats: 6s for new editions, three varieties of uniform bindings priced at 3s 6d, 2s 6d and 1s 6d, and, in the case of her children’s books, at 9d, 6d and 4d. This level of price elasticity indicates how publishers could o≠er the same title to identifiably di≠erent markets. In Glasgow there was a flourishing literature of the city. Books such as C. M. Gordon’s Jet Ford: A Tale of our City (1880) and Henry Johnston’s pseudonymously issued Martha Spruell (1887) were put out by Glasgow publishers, the latter being a collection of sketches previously published in the Glasgow periodical Quiz. Another periodical, The Bailie, a weekly, provided a forum for humorous sketches on urban life and resulted in the successful book publication of the vernacular writings of the fictional correspondent Jeems Kaye (Burgess: 59–67). More famously, Neil Munro’s tales of Para Handy were first published in the Glasgow Evening News under the pseudonym Hugh Foulis. A series of successful collections were later published by Blackwood from 1906. Even more extraordinary were the stories of Wee Macgreegor by J. J. Bell. These humorous sketches of a working-class Glasgow family, told mainly through dialogue in Glaswegian Scots, first appeared in the Glasgow Evening Times but commercial publishers thought their appeal was ‘too local’ to justify the risk of volume publication (Bell: xii). Instead, the book was published at the author’s expense by the Scots Pictorial Publishing Co. in 1902. Only a modest sale in Glasgow and the West of Scotland was anticipated but 20,000 copies were sold within

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the first six weeks and Wee Macgreegor soon became a phenomenon of print culture. As Bell recalls, there was Wee Macgreegor ‘lemonade, matches, china, “taiblet”, picture postcards, sardines’ (Bell: xiv). A second book appeared in 1904 after which the character grew up, finding love in Courtin’ Christina (1913) and entering the war in Wee Macgreegor Enlists (1915). Several publishers flourished in Paisley at the end of the century, the most notable of when was Alexander Gardner, whose books also carried a London address. As well as publishing Jamieson’s etymological dictionary of the Scottish language, in the 1880s Gardner issued editions of nineteenth-century Scottish poetry as well as volumes of contemporary poetry and a range of fiction, including William Naismith’s stories of slum life, City Echoes; or Bitter cries from Glasgow (1884). He produced fiction in a range of formats, from paper-covered shilling books to two-volume novels such as The Dean’s Daughter (1888) by Sophie F. F. Veitch. From 1882 to 1886 Gardner was proprietor and publisher of the quarterly Scottish Review which ran until 1900. With over 200 pages in each issue, the Review was eclectic and wide-ranging in its coverage of contemporary literature with a special interest in theology. Early numbers included review articles on ‘The State of the Highlands’, ‘Educational Endowments and Secondary Education’ and review essays on Carlyle, Emerson and Whitman. Once established, the Review became less theological and also less exclusively Scottish in its concerns. Articles in the April 1897 number included ‘The Subjects of the Byzantine Empire’, ‘The Gas Industry of the United Kingdom’ and ‘French Canada’. It had wide dissemination, with distribution agents in Australia, South Africa, India, France, Germany, Canada and the United States. Its contents and circulation shows how provincial Scottish publishing could be truly national and international in this period. From 1889 to 1891 Gardner published The Sun, subtitled ‘A Magazine for General Readers’. This publication also had a religious accent and among the contributors were Annie Swan, Sarah Tytler and George MacDonald, whose novel There and Back was serialised over 1889–90. Gardner continued to publish books on Scottish topics into the final decade of the century. Another local publisher who handled serial fiction was David Scott (1839–1911) of Peterhead. Proprietor of the Peterhead Sentinel, Scott published novels as well as sketches and essays in the vernacular. One of the Sentinel’s serial authors, Gavin Greig, is reported as commenting that Scott ‘might have been the publisher of work by George MacDonald and other well known authors,

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had he not in their own interests advised them to seek a more important publishing centre than Peterhead’ (Bertie: 104). An extraordinary feature of local publishing of this period was the numerous volumes of reminiscences of Scottish towns and counties. E. B. Ramsay’s widely reprinted Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character (1861) created a vogue for collecting and publishing anecdotes and reminiscences of local customs. Barely a single important town or county escaped the trend and most of these volumes were issued by local publishers or newspaper o∞ces. To take just a few examples: J. M. M’Bain’s Arbroath: Past & Present (1887) was published in Arbroath by Brodie & Salmond; J. S. Neish’s In the By-Ways of Life: A Series of Sketches of Forfarshire Characters (1881) was printed at the Weekly News o∞ce in Dundee; and the o∞ces of the Ayr Observer issued James M. Fergusson’s Auld Ayr: Sketches and Reminiscences (1884). In a similar vein, local poetry collections continued unabated in the later decades of the century. The Harp of Renfrewshire (1819) provided the precedent for such volumes as Paisley Poets (1889), The Harp of Perthshire (1893), Hawick Songs and Song Writers (1897) and The Bards of Angus and the Mearns (1897). One of the largest collections of this kind was The Bards of Galloway, published in Dalbeattie by Thomas Fraser in 1889. This was edited by Malcolm M’L. Harper, who was a student of local history and who also wrote a book on S. R. Crockett, Galloway’s most famous author. Local publishers were often associated with local Burns Clubs. The market for books on Burns and Burnsiana flourished at the end of the century, with the launching of the Burns Chronicle in 1891 and the publications of such books as Paisley Burns Clubs (1893). Burns Clubs have received a bad press, thanks mainly to Hugh MacDiarmid, and are commonly seen as part of the same regressive poetic tradition as the series One Hundred Modern Scottish Poets (1880–97) published in Brechin by D. H. Edwards, which ran to sixteen volumes, and the various Whistle-Binkie anthologies issued throughout the century. As Edwin Morgan comments, these volumes were ‘carefully devised as instruments of social control’ (1988: 340), seeking to avoid the ‘filth’ that had made the ‘pestilent’ old chapbooks so ‘coarse and indecent’ (Robertson 1890: vi). In addition to these volumes, local publishers and printers supported the tradition of vernacular poetry that has been identified as foundational to the Scottish literary renaissance. The Dundonian poet James Young Geddes, who later became baillie of Alyth, was an industrious member of the Dundee and Alyth Burns Societies. Geddes contributed

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to the Dundee Advertiser and had poetry volumes published locally in Dundee and Alyth. Local publishing was clearly the appropriate forum for Geddes’ radical politics, though arguably it has contributed to the critical neglect of his work. The Edinburgh schoolteacher James Logie Robertson blended creativity with criticism. As well as producing school editions of English and Scottish poets and school books on English literature for Blackwoods, Robertson edited the works of numerous Scottish poets including Burns, Scott, Thomson, Ramsay and Campbell for the Oxford University Press, ensuring that Scottish literature formed a major part of Oxford’s canonising programme of poetry publishing. Robertson was a prolific essayist. His volume For Puir Auld Scotland’s Sake (1887) was published by the Edinburgh firm of William Paterson and he also made contributions to The Scotsman and to W. E. Henley’s unionist Scots Observer. His first volume of Poems (1878) was published in Dundee under his own name, but it is the verses he contributed to The Scotsman from the 1880s under the pseudonym of ‘Hugh Haliburton’ that are now seen as important contributions to the revival of vernacular poetry at the end of the century. Horace in Homespun (1886), Ochil Idyls (1891) and other volumes were issued by Paterson, whilst Excursions in Prose and Verse (1905) appeared from a further Edinburgh firm, George Morton. Charles Murray was another poet who published in the Scots Observer as well as in a variety of other local and metropolitan magazines, including The Spectator and The Times. His famous poem ‘The Whistle’ appeared in Chambers’s Journal in 1906. Significantly, however, his collection of poems Hamewith was first published in Aberdeen in 1900 by Wyllie & Son before an expanded edition was issued in London by Constable in 1909. In this instance, local publication was the prelude to a wider audience. A poet who also had close links with the press was Lewis Spence, who from 1899 to 1904 was a sub-editor on The Scotsman. He edited a short-lived Edinburgh Magazine before moving in 1906 to London to work for the British Weekly. Not every author found Scottish publishers supportive of their work. John Davidson’s early volumes of poetry and plays were published in Glasgow by Frederick Wilson in small editions and cheap formats. The verse drama Diabolus Amans (1885) was issued anonymously in an edition of 300 copies at 2s 6d, and the 1s novel The North Wall appeared in the same year. Davidson soon quarrelled with Wilson, however, and later said that he was ‘one of the worst types of Scotchmen to deal with’ (Townsend: 55). In 1889 he printed some of his plays privately in Greenock in a collection that bears his name as publisher but not as

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author. His decision to give up teaching in 1890 and move to London to become a professional author marked the severance of his work from indigenous Scottish publishing. In a Music Hall and Other Poems was published in 1891 by Ward & Downey, Scottish publishers having been, in Davidson’s words, ‘afraid of a certain breadth to be found in some passages’ of the poetry volume (Townsend: 59). Davidson’s work appeared under several other imprints, including Lawrence & Bullen and Methuen, but it was to be Elkin Mathews and John Lane who would establish him as one of the foremost poets of the 1890s. Mathews & Lane were the most innovative publishers of poetry of the period (see Nelson 1971 and 1989). Closely associated with Irish literature, the two men were important sponsors of the Celtic Movement in literature in the 1890s. Richard Le Gallienne recommended Fleet Street Eclogues (1893) to Lane and the book was an instant success – the first edition of 300 copies, issued at 5s, was sold out within a month. On the back of that success, Mathews & Lane reissued Unwin’s edition of Davidson’s plays, which had ‘fallen from the press almost stillborn’ and the author also managed, after great di∞culty, to transfer the remaining copies of his other plays following the demise of Frederick Wilson’s firm (Nelson: 230–1). These were duly included in the new edition of the plays which appeared in 1894. The elaborate frontispiece by Aubrey Beardsley which graced this volume situated Davidson firmly within the decadent movement and the avantgarde culture of the iconic book that was associated with Mathews & Lane. Contributions to the Yellow Book followed, including the famous poem ‘A Ballad of a Nun’, which the Fortnightly Review had rejected as ‘disgustingly licentious’ (Townsend: 174). Another writer associated with Mathews & Lane was William Sharp. Sharp’s career indicates the range of markets on o≠er for the writer of the period. He had been moving and operating in London literary and art circles since the early 1880s but remained art critic of the Glasgow Herald. His early volumes of poetry were published by Elliott Stock, and like Stevenson, he wrote several serial stories for Young Folks. The Sport of Chance, however, appeared in the Dundee paper the People’s Friend discussed above, before being published as a three-volume novel by Hurst & Blackett in 1887. Sharp continued to operate in English and Scottish markets after he had discovered his alter ego Fiona Macleod. The first Macleod book, Pharais (1894), was issued by Frank Murray at the Moray Press in Derbyshire. The Mountain Lovers (1895), however, was published by John Lane in the famous Keynotes series. Put out at the cheap price of 3s 6d, this series took its name from a collection of short stories by the

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New Woman writer, George Egerton. With the added association of designs by Aubrey Beardsley, Keynotes quickly became established as an embodiment of decadence in literature. With his subsequent books, however, Sharp opened up Fiona Macleod to a di≠erent market altogether. The Sin-Eater (1895) and The Washer of the Ford (1896) were published in Edinburgh by Patrick Geddes (1854–1932), the central figure in what has been identified as the first Scottish Renaissance. A biologist, sociologist, educational reformer, city planner and much else besides, Geddes’ ambition was ‘to recreate in Edinburgh an active centre [and] arrest the tremendous centralising power of the metropolis of London’ (Sharp: 49). One of his ventures in this regard was the publication of a new review, The Evergreen, in 1895 which was edited by Sharp. Just five numbers were issued. Sharp also became literary advisor to the publishing concern ‘Patrick Geddes and Colleagues’, which issued a small number of books in support of the Celtic Movement, including in 1896 an edition of Ossian prepared by Sharp, and Lyra Celtica, an anthology of Celtic poetry edited by his wife, Elizabeth. Geddes’ publishing activities indicate the resurgence in cultural nationalism in Scotland at the end of the century but we should not underestimate the importance of the wider British market and the role of editors and publishers outside Scotland in facilitating Scottish literature. There was a remarkably strong Scottish presence throughout the publishing, printing and newspaper industries. In 1897 David Christie Murray noted that that ‘to-day the press of Great Britain swarms with Scotchmen’ (Murray 1897: 155), and in 1902 T. W. H. Crosland pronounced: ‘In Fleet Street, if you do not happen to possess a little of the Doric, you are at some disadvantage in comprehending the persons with whom you are compelled to talk’ (Crosland: 60). Higher up the scale, there were significant Scottish figures operating in the editorial and publishing world, helping to support Scottish writers. Andrew Lang found an early outlet for his work via Alfred Trubner Nutt, who from 1878 ran his father’s firm of David Nutt. Alfred founded the Folk-Lore Journal and helped establish the Folklore Society in 1878 and the Irish Texts Society in 1898. His contribution to Scottish Celticism included the publication of a series of Scottish Gaelic texts, The Waifs and Strays of the Celtic Tradition (1889–95), which included John Gregorson Campbell’s Clan Traditions and Popular Tales of the Western Highlands and Islands (1895). The firm also published W. E. Henley’s essays and poems and, in 1908, a multi-volume edition of Henley’s Works. More popular and notorious was the literature that became known as Kailyard (see Nash 2004). Although restricted to the late 1890s, the

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fiction associated with this term has come to stand for the whole of Victorian Scottish literature. William Donaldson situates his account of newspaper fiction in Victorian Scotland against the work of Barrie, Crockett and Maclaren which, he argues, represents a bourgeois book culture written for, and consumed by, an audience outside Scotland. Certainly the fiction of J. M. Barrie and, in particular, Ian Maclaren owe a lot to the publishing and marketing strategies of William Robertson Nicoll (1851–1923), one of the most important literary figures of this period. Nicoll became editor and literary advisor to Hodder & Stoughton in 1884 and soon transformed that firm’s list which had previously been dominated by religious publications. Barrie’s Auld Licht Idylls (1888) and A Window in Thrums (1889) were published by Hodder to quiet acclaim, as was the bigger seller Margaret Ogilvy (1896). One of Nicoll’s first achievements in his role with Hodder was to set up and edit a new 1d newspaper, the British Weekly, which first appeared in November 1886 and soon acquired a six-figure circulation. Subtitled ‘A Journal of Christian and Social Progress’, the venture was driven by religious and political impulses but also became a major forum for reviews and articles on literary topics – Stevenson was among the early contributors. Although it is widely recognised that the British Weekly provided an important forum for the production of Kailyard fiction – the work of Barrie, Crockett and Maclaren is often referred to as ‘the British Weekly School’ – it is only the career of Maclaren that is indelibly tied to this newspaper. Most of Crockett’s early sketches were published in The Christian Leader, while Barrie was indebted to several editors in his early career and his later fiction was published by Cassell. On the other hand, Nicoll was almost singly responsible for discovering, encouraging, publishing and marketing ‘Ian Maclaren’, whose sketches published in the British Weekly were collected in Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush (1894) and The Days of Auld Langsyne (1895). Contrary to what has often been claimed, the Kailyard books sold as widely in Scotland as they did elsewhere. William Donaldson argues that the works of Barrie, Crockett and Maclaren ‘dominated the Anglo-American book-market in the closing decade of the century’; but Scotland formed part of this market and statistical evidence suggests that sales in Scotland were comparable to those in England (see Bassett). Crockett and Maclaren sold prodigiously – 130,000 copies of Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush were sold in Britain and America within a year. Such sales were made possible by the expansion of the book-buying public at the end of the century and Maclaren, in particular, typifies the best-selling author of the period,

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Figure 3.5 Cover of Ian Maclaren, Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush, 1895.

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going on to earn considerable sums on the lecture circuit in America. What is more, Nicoll’s extravagant promotion of his and Crockett’s work elevated this fiction to the realm of high art and ensured that, for a time, Scottish fiction became central to British literary culture in the 1890s. Nicoll was tireless in his editorial and publishing initiatives, setting up numerous magazines and newspapers and editing various series of books (see Darlow 1925). The Success, a 1d weekly, was, ironically, one of his few failures. Set up in 1895, it ran only for five years but in the context of this period it has an interesting history. Special editions were printed for both Scotland and Ireland, an acknowledgement that these markets, though part of the larger national and international market, were significant enough to demand separate treatment. The editor of the paper was David Storrar Meldrum, who became literary advisor to Blackwoods in 1894 and later a partner in the firm (It was Meldrum who revived the quality of Blackwood’s list by publishing, among others, John Buchan and Joseph Conrad (see Finkelstein 2002)). Meldrum edited a new edition of John Galt for Blackwoods, in which he was assisted by George Douglas Brown, who would later come to fame with his anti-Kailyard novel The House with the Green Shutters (1901). In his capacity as editor of the Success, Meldrum invited Brown to contribute some ‘Scottish idylls of a more robust character than was the fashion at that moment’ (Veitch: 85). The first anonymous sketch, ‘On the Carrick Road’, appeared on 14 September 1895 and Brown made several other contributions to Nicoll’s paper as the spheres of the arch-priest and the arch-critic of the Kailyard moved momentarily together. Nicoll’s success in placing Scotland at the centre of British literary culture at the turn of the century cannot be overlooked, however much subsequent critics have disapproved of his political and national outlook. In 1891 he launched the Bookman, the first successful magazine devoted entirely to literature. This neglected landmark of Victorian publishing bridged the gap between the old quarterlies and monthlies and the new cheap magazines such as Tit Bits. It not only became ‘the most widely read literary periodical in Britain’ but also achieved considerable status as a serious-minded literary magazine (Keating: 338), attracting writers of the calibre and literary pretension of Swinburne, Pater and Yeats among others. The pages were liberally filled with articles and features on Scottish authors and topics and the Bookman represents a major attempt by Nicoll to shape the literary culture of Britain, with Scotland placed prominently within that culture.

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Scots Observer On 24 November 1888 Edinburgh saw the publication of a new weekly conservative journal aimed at a British readership, but with a definite Scottish slant. Its conception was in the hands of well-to-do Edinburgh businessmen: the lawyers Robert Fitzroy Bell and Charles Baxter; the printer and later chairman of T. & A. Constable, Walter Blaikie; and the wealthy art collector R. T. Hamilton Bruce. They felt that Scotland needed a weekly journal of substance rather than relying on the London weeklies, in particular the Saturday Review. Edinburgh, and Scotland in general, was currently being served by the Scottish Reformer and Weekly Review and two Glasgow weeklies. The journal advertised itself not only as a ‘Record and Review of Current Politics, Literature, Science, Art, &c’ but also as a ‘Scottish National Journal, dealing with Imperial and General A≠airs, and giving a hearty support to Constitutional Principles’ (The Scotsman, 22 November 1888): a broad remit. The first print run was 3,750 copies, rising to 4,000 for the next three issues and falling to 1,700 with the sixth issue. The journal initially consisted of the title page, a page of advertisements, and twenty-one full pages of text followed by twelve pages of advertisements. It was divided into four pages of notes, three pages of leaders, five or so pages of articles, or ‘middles’, and one or two poems, with a correspondence section followed by book reviews. Articles and leaders were generally unsigned, although a signed article by J. M. Barrie appeared in the first number. Reviews were never signed. It was initially priced at 6d and printed by Constable. As the journal was not making the expected impact by the end of November 1888 a new editor, to replace James Nichol Dunn (who became business manager), was found in the large form of William Ernest Henley, the successful editor of the Magazine of Art from 1882 to 1886. He was not an obvious choice, as he knew little of running a weekly journal, with the exception of the short-lived weekly Conservative London (1877–9), and his interests were literature and art rather than professional journalism. However, he was a friend of the financial backers and determined to make an impact. With the journal being based in Edinburgh, Henley needed a representative in London for success. He relied greatly on the young Charles Whibley, a man much in his mould. Whibley’s contributions and suggestions were important throughout Henley’s editorship. Whibley also stood in on the few occasions when his editor went on holiday. Henley set the tone in his second issue of 26 January 1889 with the first of the unsigned ‘Modern Men’ series, a profile of Robert Louis Stevenson written by Andrew Lang. This critique of well-known personages became a

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hallmark of the journal but unfortunately did not include women. The Scots Observer, although a very masculine and forthright journal, did publish work by women, notably articles on fashion and dress, but these were unsigned. The writer ‘Graham R. Tomson’ (later Rosamund Marriott Watson) was already an established fashion contributor and she continued under Henley’s editorship for three years. Later contributors for fashion included Robert Louis Stevenson’s cousin Katherine de Mattos and Alice Meynell. The literary content of the journal was high. Signed contributions of essays and poetry included those from Yeats, Katharine Tynan, Barrie, Kipling, Stevenson, Alice Meynell, Andrew Lang, Kenneth Grahame and the Manx poet T. E. Brown. Henley was not averse to editing his contributors’ literary e≠orts and Yeats remembers that he ‘often revised my lyrics . . . and I was comforted by my belief that he also rewrote Kipling’ (Yeats: 129). The journal’s attitude is best summarised in Henley’s own words: On the essentials of art and letters, the vital – the imperial – quality of politics, the characteristics of the Scottish nation, the relations of that nation to the great Empire of which Scotland forms a part – on these and other topics, of less or greater moment, The Scots Observer has said its say, and with no uncertain sound. In life, in politics, in art, in literature, it is right to have a standard, a morality, an ideal; and it is claimed for the journal that it has all these, and has not once been false to them. (Scots Observer, 25 May 1889) Politically the journal was fierce in its condemnation of Gladstone and all he represented, and it howled at what it termed ‘bleat’ or ‘cant’. It gave short shrift to socialism, seeing it as an attack on the fundamental rights of the individual and comparing its e≠ect with the then current socialism in Germany. The journal’s insistence on the extremes of Tory policy cut it o≠ from many of its Tory readers. The paper was involved in some minor journalistic controversies but the major controversy was Whibley’s unsigned review of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray in July 1890. Wilde was attacked for the immorality of his story with which he was identified and no artistic licence was granted the telling of such a story. In fact, Wilde’s art was ‘false art’. The Correspondence section of the Scots Observer carried the controversy for some weeks. Part of the review was quoted in Wilde’s final trial in 1895. Despite, or perhaps because of its strident views the journal was losing money, which its backers could ill a≠ord. The editor appeared to have no interest in the journal’s circulation until too late. Content was of prime importance. The highest circulation in 1890 was about 1,900. In the autumn of 1890 e≠orts were made to counterbalance this: the first of four

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literary supplements was published in the issue of 15 November 1890 and the Scots Observer became the National Observer on 22 November 1890 with publication in Edinburgh and London, but edited from Edinburgh. The first issue of the National Observer was 7,250 but by 6 December printing was at 1,950, a decline that was never halted. The editorial o∞ces finally moved to London in 1892 and the journal was eventually sold in March 1894, surviving under a new editor until 1897.4 Damian Atkinson

The Bookman established itself as the leading literary magazine of the day in the same decade as Patrick Geddes launched his short-lived Evergreen. These two contrasting publications indicate the two faces that make up the relationship between Scotland and literary publishing in this period. They should not be seen as polar opposites; no one publication had an exclusive, privileged access to an authentic Scottish literary culture. They form part of a multi-faceted culture of literary production that saw Scotland and Scottish issues emerging through the sometimes disparate, sometimes interacting worlds of Scottish, British and international publishing.

4

A full run of the Scots Observer (and National Observer) is at the Newspaper Library, Colindale, London. There are no archives. The following give insight into Henley’s editorship: Jerome H. Buckley (1945) William Ernest Henley; A Study in the ‘Counter-Decadence’ of the ‘Nineties’. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press; John Connell (1949) W. E. Henley. London: Constable; J. M. Flora (1970) William Ernest Henley. New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc; André Guillaume (1973) William Ernest Henley et son groupe: Néo-romantisme et impérialisme à la fin du XIXe siècle. Paris: C. Klincksieck; and Peter D. McDonald (1997) British Literary Culture and Publishing Practice 1880–1914, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Literary Publishing: 1914–45 Margery Palmer McCulloch In 1914, Scotland’s identity was still significantly related to its postUnion participation in the British imperial project and to its place as the North British industrial heart of the Empire. Culturally, however, and especially in the area of literature and language, there continued to be a sense of distinctiveness from England, while from the later nineteenth century onwards there had been increasing political calls for some degree of Home Rule. Although it was not until the 1920s that a focused movement for cultural and national regeneration got underway, its beginnings can perhaps be seen in turn of the century activities such as the ‘Renascence’ associated with Patrick Geddes and the reaction against ‘kailyard’ fiction epitomised by George Douglas Brown’s satirical The House with the Green Shutters (1901). Charles Murray’s Hamewith (1900), a collection of Scots-language poems deriving from his upbringing in the North East of the country, was recognised as an attempt to use the vernacular in a more vital way; while The Edinburgh Anthology of Scottish Verse, edited in 1910 by Professor W. MacNeile Dixon, brought together Scottish poetry from past and present and began to open up the question ‘What is Scottish poetry?’ (Dixon: vii) Such signs of a reawakening of interest in the distinctiveness of Scottish literary culture were stalled by the outbreak of World War One in 1914. It was therefore not until the post-war period that the question of Scottish cultural and political identity returned to the agenda, this time in a more challenging and uncompromising way. The principal focus of this section will be on literary publishing associated with the interwar revival movement popularly known as the Scottish Renaissance, initiated in the early 1920s by the poet and critic C.M. Grieve (Hugh MacDiarmid); together with publications by writers not specifically associated with MacDiarmid’s Scottish Renaissance 223

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Figure 3.6 Cardboard ad. display for J. MacDougall Hay, Gillespie: A Novel, 1916.

group but working alongside it: for example, the increasing number of women writers who explored a female-centred agenda in fiction. In addition, the section will initially examine briefly the literary situation during the years of World War One, and, in conclusion, the years of World War Two.

1914–1919 In his previous chapters on publishing houses and literary publishing in the pre-1914 period, Andrew Nash demonstrates the visibility and strength of Scottish publishers who operated dually from Edinburgh and London, together with the relative ease with which authors were able to move between English and Scottish-based publishers yet maintain their audience: a situation which continued during the war years. Thus John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915) and Greenmantle (1916) were published in London by Nelson; and J. MacDougall Hay’s Gillespie (1914) and Barnacles (1916) were published by Constable. The working-class Glasgow novels Children of the Dead End (1914) and The Rat-Pit (1915) by the Irish/Scottish writer Patrick McGill were published in London by Herbert Jenkins while the Scots-language medium

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of Violet Jacob’s Songs of Angus (John Murray, 1915) and More Songs of Angus (Country Life, 1918) proved no obstacle to publication outside Scotland. However, more local work such as Bydand, a Scots-language poetry collection by John Mitchell from the North-East, was published in Aberdeen in 1918, and John Alexander Ferguson’s play Campbell of Kilmhor, written specifically for the Glasgow Repertory Company, was published in 1915 by Glasgow publishers Gowans and Gray. A new area of literary publishing in this period was poetry and fiction relating to the war. In a recent essay ‘Scotland, Britishness and the First World War’, David Goldie suggests that ‘it remains more meaningful to talk about a British rather than a Scottish literature of the First World War’ and his argument is convincingly supported by references to popular fiction such as J.J. Bell’s Wee MacGreegor Enlists, R.W. Campbell’s Private Spud Tamson series and the wartime exploits of Neil Munro’s well-established Vital Spark crew, where storyline, plot and characterisation seem designed to create a sense of British patriotic pride and confidence rather than any specifically Scottish response to the conditions of war (Goldie: 39). The context for such patriotic war writing is provided in David Finkelstein’s essay, ‘Literature, Propaganda and the First World War: The Case of Blackwood’s Magazine’. Finkelstein points to the ways in which Blackwood’s became ‘one of many media sources through which British public perceptions were constructed and manipulated during the war’ and in the process lays bare a network of propaganda and censoring activities in which certain publishers, magazines and authors, considered to be ‘controllers of public opinion’ played their part, and which made it virtually impossible for dissenting voices to find a way into periodical or book publishing (Finkelstein: 3). John Buchan, a regular contributor to Blackwood’s, was a North British recruit to the men of letters group, and in 1917 was appointed as the Director of a Department of Information established to deal with the production and dissemination of printed texts. Buchan’s own war novel, Mr Standfast, written between 1917 and 1918 and published by Hodder & Stoughton in 1919, provided a quality example of British wartime propaganda publishing in contrast to much of the material in the popular press. Poetry also featured in war-time publishing and, if suitably patriotic, was included in magazines such as Blackwood’s. On the other hand, poetry as a genre appeared to offer the opportunity for a more contemplative or hostile assessment of the destructiveness of war, as we see in both English and Scottish war poetry of the time. Trevor Royle’s In Flanders Fields (1990), an anthology of poetry and prose relating to World War One, includes poems by writers such as W.D. Cocker, Roderick Watson Kerr, Joseph Lee, Charles Murray, J.B. Salmond,

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Violet Jacob and others where themes are of personal and community loss, the futility of war, the similarities that men on both sides of the conflict share. Despite his involvement in the British war propaganda campaign, John Buchan’s ‘Home Thoughts of Abroad’ is one of the poems which speak of the pain of loss through death in war, and, implicitly, of the futility of the conflict which brought the loss. Joseph Lee’s poems, which communicate more explicitly the wastefulness of war, seem to have escaped the censor’s notice to achieve publication during the war in the Dundee Advertiser and the People’s Journal, of which he had been editor. It is interesting to note also the number of Scottish war poems written in vernacular Scots. Poetry, through its openness to language variety and metaphorical expression, may well have offered the possibility of a more genuine, as opposed to a parodic or conditioned communication of identity and response, the results of which - in both English and Scots - go some way to modifying David Goldie’s conclusion that there was not a Scottish literature of the First World War. Several of these Scottish war poets were to reappear in C.M. Grieve’s postwar Northern Numbers, a series of poetry anthologies which signalled the beginning of the interwar revival movement in Scottish literature and culture.

Scottish literary magazines The Scots Magazine drew on a putative history dating back to the eighteenth century but was refounded in 1924 to provide ‘a high-class literary periodical devoted entirely to Scotland and things Scottish’, to avoid ‘the quagmire of partisan politics’ and the disfigurements of ‘religious dispute’ and to serve as ‘the organ of the Scottish societies throughout the world’. Any lack of commitment in this prospectus to cultural, let alone political, nationalism seems window-dressing in the light of the record, from April 1924 to September 1926, of its first editor, C. S. Black. Black was a committed nationalist, author of The Case for Scotland (1930) and Scottish Nationalism: Its Inspiration and its Aims (1933), both published by the National Party of Scotland, as well as various plays, a brief biography of Mary, Queen of Scots, and The Silver Cross: A Saga of Scotland (1936). In other words, Black combined in his own career both the cultural and the political. This was a balance he attempted to maintain within the Scots Magazine; this was a balance he had to maintain with some discretion within a publication produced by D. C. Thomson, Dundee, a company noted then for its ‘Tartan Toryism’.

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The cultural and political agenda of the Scottish Literary Renaissance could be put forward in the Scots Magazine with the luxury of a stable circulation. Yet that was the exception rather than the norm. When William Power set up the Scots Observer in 1926, he deliberately echoed the title of W. E. Henley’s famous periodical in order to signal his ambition to attract contributors of high standing. Like the Scots Magazine, a patina of tradition could be instantly acquired. However, the magazine was the uno∞cial organ of the Presbyterian churches in Scotland and the ‘amiable, the respectable, slightly cosy church folk’ were its readership (Power 1937: 175). ‘Certain of the Church leaders . . . were most critical both of the intellectual character of the paper and of my “nationalist” tendencies’ (Power 1935: 161). He ceased to be editor in 1929 after only three years. Creating a new readership for a new set of cultural values was also the problem of C. M. Grieve (Hugh MacDiarmid). His solution was selfpublication without the need to depend on a consistent list of subscribers. The first in a series of magazines, for which Grieve himself often provided the contributions under a variety of pseudonyms, was the monthly Scottish Chapbook. William Power, then literary editor of the Glasgow Herald wrote a leader extolling Grieve’s plans for it in May 1922 and the first issue appeared in August. It lasted until the November/December issue of 1923. The Scottish Nation appeared from May 1923 until December 1923. The Northern Review had the shortest lifespan of all: from May 1924 until September 1924, a total of four issues. The ability to produce these magazines (with the exception of the Northern Review) through the printing facilities of the Montrose Review, on which he was at the time a reporter, reduced Grieve’s dependence on existing publishers from whom he had little support in his role as periodical entrepreneur. For example, he had failed to persuade Blackwoods in 1925–6 to support a new magazine, Scots Art. Perhaps Blackwoods was lacking in sympathy with his aims, as expressed in the Northern Review, of furthering ‘literary devolution’, of rescuing ‘Scottish arts and letters from the slough of Kailyardism’, of fostering Scottish drama and promoting a nationalist renaissance. (It is worth noting that where Grieve was most successful in these aims was in the pages of the Scottish Educational Journal, the weekly paper of the Educational Institute of Scotland.) Grieve could not maintain this spate of publications without a commercial base of willing subscribers and professional management. Little of sustained or lasting value was derived beyond three factors, important in themselves: an initial platform for young writers; the appearance of a great deal of activity that drew attention to the new movement in Scottish culture; and, thirdly, the first appearance of Grieve’s other self, Hugh MacDiarmid.

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In fact, the most notable of all the Renaissance magazines was the Modern Scot which overcame the endemic problems of the other periodicals by guaranteeing its sustainability through an independently-wealthy editor and owner: James Whyte. Whyte is relegated to a mere footnote in the lives of C. M. Grieve, Neil Gunn and Edwin Muir. Yet it is important to stress the contribution Whyte made to the Scottish Renaissance through his editorship and proprietorship of the Modern Scot – ‘the best nationalist journal of opinion since the Scottish Review [in which] the Scottish literary renaissance was enjoying its last major flourish’ (Hanham: 158). His £5,000 per annum enabled James Whyte to act as a key patron through payment of generous fees to his contributors – a relatively exceptional situation even today. Edwin Muir brought modern Europe to the Modern Scot, particularly Hermann Broch. Grieve was to write in 1935: ‘The cessation of the Modern Scot [which did not happen] is going to make it virtually impossible to secure periodical publication of Scots poems of any considerable length; and there is nothing on the horizon to take its place’ (McCleery 1998: 107). Another magazine, based in Dundee, Scottish Standard, began publication in February 1935 but merged with the Modern Scot into Outlook, the first issue of which appeared in April 1936 and monthly until January 1937. Of course, it was all to end and it was a war that ended it as it had been a war in 1914–18 that had started it. The Renaissance petered out as a broad movement and the magazines, with the exception of the Scots Magazine, died. Yet it was of the utmost importance that these magazines had appeared, some to thrive for years, others to expire after much shorter runs. They acted as a seedbed for new writers and as an outlet for material more experienced writers could not place elsewhere. They also provided a social forum where writers could make a contribution to the development of civil society in their day. They were all driven by idealism but performed best when fuelled by profit or private income. Alistair McCleery

The 1920s: towards a Scottish literary renaissance C.M. Grieve served with the Royal Medical Corps during the war and his letters from Europe to his former teacher George Ogilvie demonstrate his ambition to establish himself as a writer of consequence in the postwar period while at the same time moving Scotland and its literature out of a North British provincial situation into that of a modern European self-determining nation. In a letter of 13 February 1918, he provides a list of his reading material including ‘some English Reviews

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[. . .] some copies of Everyman and of The Month and The Tablet and The New York Saturday Post and The Sydney Bulletin and Life and La Revue Franco-Macedonienne, and some National News’ (Kerrigan: 24). Despite its wide distribution at home and abroad, especially among soldiers at the front, Blackwood’s is noticeably absent from this list as is any Scottish magazine or newspaper. While the conservative and propagandist Blackwood’s would never have found favour with the avantgarde Grieve, this absence of contemporary Scottish reading material points to a lack which would need to be remedied if Grieve’s aims for a literary revolution were to have a chance of success. The modernist age was the age of manifestos, and although the war had temporarily disrupted the advances of early modernism, Tristan Tzara’s ‘Dada Manifesto’ of 1918 introduced a new phase of European avant-garde art. In Scotland, however, there were no literary or cultural periodicals of a nature which could carry forward new ideas. In the first issue of The Scottish Chapbook which he was to found in August 1922, Grieve lamented just such a lack in Scotland ‘of phenomena recognizable as a propaganda of ideas’, and he continued: None of these significant little periodicals – crude, absurd, enthusiastic, vital – have yet appeared in Auchtermuchty or Ardnamurchan. No new publishing houses have sprung up mushroom-like [. . .] It is discouraging to reflect that this is not the way the Dadaists go about the business! (Riach 1992: 7) This ironic comment points to Grieve’s interest in artistic developments in Europe and to his awareness of the avant-garde activities of a number of small literary and cultural magazines such as Wyndham Lewis’s Blast! that had appeared earlier in London. He may have been over-optimistic in hoping to find such magazines in Auchtermuchty and Ardnamurchan, but they could reasonably have been expected to make some kind of appearance in Edinburgh, a capital of some cultural importance in eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Scotland. Despite the wartime popularity of Blackwood’s, however, neither it nor the Edinburgh Review could any longer fulfil a forward-looking role, and the generalist nature of the periodical press in Scotland could not provide a suitable platform for specialist innovation in literature or other art forms. Grieve’s solution was to provide his own literary forum. As noted earlier, his first venture after demobilisation was the series of Northern Numbers poetry anthologies, the first two published by Foulis in Edinburgh in 1920 and 1921. When Foulis experienced financial problems and could not complete the series, Grieve published the third volume himself from his home in Montrose in 1922. At the same time

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Figure 3.7 Studio photograph of Hugh MacDiarmid by Andrew Paterson of Inverness, 1927.

he was preparing to launch the first issue of a new periodical The Scottish Chapbook, which Foulis had earlier shown interest in publishing under Grieve’s editorship. Now this, too, would be edited and published by Grieve himself from Montrose. In a letter published in the Glasgow Herald of 15 May 1922, he advertised the aims and intended readership of the new magazine, stating his belief that a ‘minority in Scotland, sufficiently interested or capable of becoming interested in experimental poetics, is now quite large enough to justify the publication of such a monthly periodical as is indicated. [. . .] The venture is not to be a commercial one. It is intended to cover expenses and no more. [. . .] Only a very limited number of subscribers at 10s annnually (for which they will receive the twelve monthly issues post free) are needed’ (Bold 1984: 757). Sufficient subscribers (including the writers Helen Cruickshank, Neil Gunn and William Soutar who themselves were to became contributors) were achieved to launch the Scottish Chapbook in August 1922 and to keep it running monthly until December 1923: a not

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inconsiderable achievement given that Grieve was editor, publisher and often multiple contributor, in addition to his day job on the Montrose Review, his work as a Town Councillor, and his various creative writing projects. The Scottish Chapbook, with its red cover, strong lion rampant image and motto proclaiming ‘Not Traditions - Precedents’ is now seen as the flagship of the Scottish Renaissance movement, providing a forum for a ‘propaganda of ideas’ and making a public declaration of its aims through ‘The Chapbook Programme’ which featured prominently in each issue: aims which included the regeneration of literature in ‘English, Gaelic, or Braid Scots’ and the bringing of Scottish literature ‘into closer touch with current European tendencies in technique and ideation’ (McCulloch: xii). The Chapbook is especially important for the appearance in its third issue of October 1922 of the new Scots-language poet ‘Hugh M’Diarmid’ and his poem ‘The Watergaw’; and for its series of editorials ‘A Theory of Scots Letters’ in February and March 1923 which established the editor’s case for a modern poetry revival based on the use of Scots as a literary language. Having initially been sceptical about the potential of Scots as a modern literary medium, and having vigorously opposed the attempt of the Vernacular Circle of the London Burns Club to revive the use of the language in an acrimonious correspondence in the Aberdeen Free Press in the winter of 1921/22 , by the end of his ‘Theory of Scots Letters’ editorials Grieve/MacDiarmid had convinced himself that the Scots language was ‘a vast storehouse of just the very peculiar and subtle effects which modern European literature is assiduously seeking’ (Bold 1984: 750–6; McCulloch: 27–8). Despite Grieve’s initial (and recurrent) hostility to the Vernacular Circle of the London Burns Club, the Club and the Burns Chronicle periodical made a worthwhile contribution to the language debate, encouraging Scots-language work in schools through speaking and writing competitions and hosting and publishing a series of lectures on language such as Professor W.A. Craigie’s ‘The Present State of the Scottish Tongue’. Their input was not an avant-garde one, but it was part of another level of postwar interest in Scottish affairs reflected in the issues raised in magazines such as the Burns Chronicle and Scottish Notes and Queries, as well as in political and social discussions in the daily press. Grieve’s second periodical, also published by himself from Montrose, was the weekly Scottish Nation, which ran in parallel with the Scottish Chapbook from May 1923 until December 1923, when both ceased. Grieve had hoped to obtain some financial support for his new publication from the Scottish activist and businessman R.E. Muirhead, but

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in the end this support proved ‘more moral than financial’, as Alan Bold describes it (Bold 1988: 144). Although its opening issue called for the freedom of Scotland from English influence (perhaps in the hope of gaining Muirhead’s financial support), The Scottish Nation’s international and eclectic agenda was close in format to The New Age, an English magazine edited by A.R. Orage, which had introduced both Grieve and Edwin Muir to European writers and artistic movements in the prewar and wartime period. Like its mentor, The Scottish Nation covered a wide range of topics in addition to literature, with many ‘contributors’ being Grieve in disguise. He was, for example, the ‘Isobel Guthrie’ who wrote about ‘modern Continental Poetry and Other Topics’ and who also contributed articles on Scottish music. Edwin Muir’s ‘A Note on Friedrich Hölderlin’ - the first English-language essay on the German poet - was published in September 1923. Reviews of Babette Deutsch and Avrahm Yarmolinsky’s Modern Russian Poetry and Contemporary German Poetry provided source material for the adaptations or ‘recreations’ of European poetry in MacDiarmid’s A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle in 1926. The magazine also included material on the situation of Gaelic, the Irish in Scotland and dealt sympathetically with ‘women’s grievances’. Although, due to financial difficulties, it was short-lived, the Scottish Nation can be seen as symbolic of a new, although small, intellectual and European-oriented movement in Scottish culture, which was also rooted in contemporary Scottish life. Despite the superhuman energy of its editor, however, and the support of a small group of contributors and readers, a weekly magazine following the pattern of the metropolitan New Age (which itself had never made a profit) could not be sustained without greater financial and human resources, both in relation to contributors and audience. And Scotland, as yet, could not supply these. Following the demise of the Scottish Nation, Grieve himself began to contribute to the New Age, now under the editorship of Arthur Brenton. He simultaneously (in May 1924) set about attempting to raise money to bring back The Scottish Nation as a more feasible monthly magazine, this time under the title of The Northern Review. This magazine was published in Edinburgh with the help of two assistant editors and a London agent but lasted for four issues only until September 1924. Although these periodicals initiated and edited by Grieve were shortlived, they had an impact out of all proportion to their short lives. By the mid-1920s, the principal Scottish newspapers regularly contained articles and letters on the new direction in Scottish cultural life and the ‘The Scottish Renaissance’ was a term in common use to describe the new literary movement, by supporters and sceptics alike (McCulloch,

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52-106). The spread of information about the movement was greatly helped by the fact that Grieve was himself a journalist and was therefore able to syndicate material in various publications. Many of the arguments developed in Scottish Chapbook editorials were prefigured or repeated in issues of the Dunfermline Press. In addition, many of the early supporters of the new movement such as William Power, Lewis Spence and William Jeffrey, were themselves journalists and so could either contribute reviews and articles to newspapers or assist in an editorial way behind the scenes. Of especial importance was Grieve’s ability to control the agenda of his magazines through being his own editor and publisher as well as ubiquitous contributor, a freedom he was not to experience again until the late 1930s. Public recognition of the importance of the new movement in Scottish literature was confirmed in May 1925, when the editor of the Scottish Educational Journal commissioned Grieve/MacDiarmid to write a series of assessments of Scottish literary figures, a series which caused much controversy in the Journal’s pages but which furthered awareness of the literary revival and its principal activist. The series was published in book form as Contemporary Scottish Studies in 1926. Subsequently other periodicals, not edited by MacDiarmid, but committed to Scottish renewal, began to appear. These included the Scots Independent, a nationalist political magazine, and the Scots Observer, ‘A Weekly Review of Religion, Life and Letters’ supported by the Scottish Protestant Churches, both founded in 1926. The Scots Observer was edited by William Power, who had greatly assisted the new literary revival movement when on the editorial staff of the Glasgow Herald. While the periodical carried a wide range of cultural and social material, its inaugural editorial emphasised its purpose ‘to strengthen and make socially manifest the spiritual leadership of the Scottish Protestant Churches’, an objective which reflected a growing concern about increased Irish Catholic immigration to Scotland and its perceived consequences (Scots Observer, 2 October 1926: 1). The Pictish Review, which ran from 1927 to 1928, was edited by R. Erskine of Marr whose inaugural editorial proposed ‘to present a Pictish view of things in general; to re-elucidate the values implicit, and explicit, in Pictish history and civilisation’ (Pictish Review, 1.1 November 1927: 1).

Blackwoods and Hugh MacDiarmid (1892–1978) Christopher Murray Grieve, the Scots poet who wrote under the pseudonym Hugh MacDiarmid, began his publishing career with the esteemed yet highly conservative Edinburgh firm William Blackwood & Sons in 1925. He

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had published a prose and verse collection, Annals of the Five Senses, in 1923, but his best known works of Scots poetry, modernist poems in literary Scots (or Doric as he termed it) from which he would make his name as one of the pre-eminent poets of the twentieth century, appeared under the imprint of this most unlikely host of such radical material. William Blackwood & Sons, founded in 1805, was a family-run business that throughout the nineteenth century had grown into a distinguished list publisher of finely gauged, conservative leaning fiction, prose and some poetry. Best known for their early championing of Scottish writers such as John Galt and Susan Ferrier, in the nineteenth and early twentieth century they would publish significant work by George Eliot, Anthony Trollope, Thomas Hardy, Neil Munro and Joseph Conrad, among others. Their lists also included poetry, but little that was considered to be at the forefront of literary culture: they published the work of the early twentieth-century poet laureate Alfred Noyes, for example, judged since to be one of the least impressive of those nominated to the post in recent history. It is surprising, therefore, that between 1925 and 1930 Blackwoods would gamble on a little-known poet writing in broad Scots dialect, publishing MacDiarmid’s Sangschaw (1925), Pennywheep (1926), his groundbreaking masterpiece A Drunk Man Looks at a Thistle (1926), and To Circumjack Cencrastus (1930). These works have since taken their place as canonical texts in Scottish cultural terms. Little evidence exists as to when MacDiarmid first came into contact with the firm. It is possible that the novelist John Buchan played a part in bringing the two together. Buchan had been a supporter of MacDiarmid since 1918, when Grieve had sent him a manuscript of poetry A Voice from Macedonia for consideration by the Edinburgh firm Thomas Nelson & Sons, of whom Buchan was one of the directors. Though Buchan thought highly of the collection, Nelsons ultimately decided against its publication. Buchan later contributed a supportive preface to the first edition of Sangschaw, after Herbert Grierson, Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature at the University of Edinburgh, was unable to complete work for it. Negotiations for the publication of Sangschaw began and were resolved in April 1925, when MacDiarmid accepted a sliding scale royalty o≠er of 10 per cent on all sales for the first 750 sold, 15 per cent on the subsequent 750 copies, and 20 per cent on all sales beyond 1,500. Such sums were fairly standard for untried authors on Blackwood’s lists over the first quarter of the twentieth century: in 1907 E. M. Forster, for example, had been o≠ered for The Longest Journey a royalty scale of 10 per cent on the first 500 copies sold, 12.5 per cent on the second 500, 15 per cent on the second 1,000 sold, and 1s a copy for all sales above 2,000 (Finkelstein 2002: 104). The Blackwood directors’ initial views on MacDiarmid and his work are unclear. They had not met him when they accepted his first

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Figure 3.8 Hugh MacDiarmid Memorial Sculpture, 1985. [© The Scotsman Publications Ltd. Licensor www.scran.ac.uk] manuscript, and only did so later through the intercession of one of MacDiarmid’s supporters and patrons, Helen B. Cruickshank. As she recounts in a 1962 memoir, when she learned in 1927 that though the firm had accepted his manuscript ‘out of the blue’, Grieve had not visited their premises, she rang up the firm to arrange a meeting with its main director (George William Blackwood) at their o∞ces on 45 George Street. The famous oval visiting room, hung with portraits of George Eliot, Thomas De Quincey, James Hogg and ‘Christopher North’ was for her a fitting meeting place between old and new Scottish cultural representatives: We had a pleasant chat in their famous old Saloon, with its round polished table and warm red walls hung round with mellow portraits. I felt that Christopher Grieve was not out of place here in the company of Christopher North, the Ettrick Shepherd and others of the Noctes Ambrosianae. (Cruickshank 1962: 191) MacDiarmid’s works did not sell well initially. Blackwood reported to MacDiarmid in 1927 that Sangschaw sales for the previous year had been 106 copies, Penny Wheep had sold 117, and A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle had sold 99 (MacDiarmid 1984: 346). Nevertheless the

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Blackwood firm continued to accept other poetry works by MacDiarmid during what was one of his most productive writing periods. The link lasted until late 1929, when they rejected in turn MacDiarmid’s submissions of the poetry collection Fier comme un Écossais, his proposal for a new literary journal, and a proposed essay collection, At the Sign of the Thistle. Following these disappointments, MacDiarmid was forced to look elsewhere for support, starting what would become a peripatetic and complicated relationship with various publishers and sources over his remaining literary career. David Finkelstein

Another significant publishing venture in this period was the founding of the Porpoise Press in 1922 by two Edinburgh students, Roderick Watson Kerr and George Malcolm Thomson (McCleery 1988). In contrast to the new developments in small magazines in the early 1920s, Scottish book publishing still operated on the traditional prewar British pattern and could not easily offer a home for fiction and poetry with a modernist and/or nationalist context. Between 1922 and 1930 Porpoise Press’s ‘Broadsheet’ series produced a number of Scots-language poetry pamphlets by contemporary writers such as Lewis Spence, William Jeffrey, Alexander Gray, Violet Jacob, Hugh MacDiarmid, Marion Angus, William Ogilvie, as well as poems by Robert Henryson and Robert Fergusson from earlier periods. They published translations of work by European writers, including Gray’s translations of poems by Heine set to music by Schumann in his Dichterliebe. Such publications, and the advertisements about them on individual Porpoise pamphlets, significantly aided the attempt to create a modern Scots-language poetry revival by creating a publishing context which offered a sympathetic hearing to new, modern work in Scots. Through the Porpoise Press broadsheets and pamphlets, therefore, a considerable number of poets succeeded in achieving solo publication in Scotland during the 1920s. MacDiarmid had been forced to publish his Annals of the Five Senses (a collection of verse and prose) himself in 1923, although it was reissued by Porpoise in 1929. The new poetry context may well have emboldened Blackwood in Edinburgh to publish the three Scots-language works which made his name as a poet of major significance – the collections Sangschaw (1925), Penny Wheep (1926) and the long modernist dramatic monologue A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle (1926). The dust jacket for Sangschaw, for example, advertised that some poems in the collection had already been translated into French and Danish and that most had been set to music by the composer Francis George Scott,

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including the prize-winning composition based on ‘O Jesu Parvule’ (Bold 1988: 162). In contrast, more traditional and established Scots-language poets such as Violet Jacob and Charles Murray continued to publish in London, although Jacob contributed also to the Porpoise Pamphlets series. In 1929, Porpoise Press published Hidden Doors, a collection of short stories by Neil M. Gunn. Gunn’s first novel The Grey Coast had been published in London by Cape in 1926 and he had been acclaimed by MacDiarmid in Contemporary Scottish Studies as ‘the only prosewriter of promise, that is to say, in relation to that which is distinctively Scottish rather than tributary to the “vast engulfing sea” of English literature’ (McCulloch: 62). Porpoise went on to publish Gunn’s next five novels, on paper a potentially significant step forward for Scottish fiction publishing. Unfortunately, however, its founders both had to leave Scotland to further their careers and in 1930 it was taken over by Faber. Despite a continuing Scottish editorial input and, for a number of years, its original name (as, for example, in the publishing of Gunn’s fiction), administration became increasingly London-based and its significance as a Scottish Renaissance publishing outlet diminished. In contrast to this increase in poetry publication in Scotland, Edwin Muir’s English-language First Poems (1925) and Chorus of the Newly Dead (1926) were published by Leonard and Virgina Woolf at the Hogarth Press and his poetry and prose work remained with Hogarth and other London publishers. In the immediate post-1918 years Muir was the most significant modern critic on the Scottish literary scene, although his articles were published mainly in London periodicals and in the American Freeman. MacDiarmid described him in Contemporary Scottish Studies as ‘incontestably in the first flight of contemporary critics of welt-literatur’ (McCulloch: 61). Although Muir spent much of the 1920s living outside Scotland, and his audience was as much a metropolitan or international one as a specifically Scottish one, he supplied as critic and, with his wife, translator, an important part of the international, European context of the literary and cultural revival as well as contributing to critiques of Scottish history and past and present literature. In particular, Muir’s articles and reviews of Scottish Renaissance writing in periodicals such as the Saturday Review of Literature, Nation and Athenaeum and, in the 1930s the Spectator and Listener, did much to establish interest in the revival movement beyond Scotland as well as within the country. The literary revival in the 1920s was conducted principally through periodical and poetry publishing. Nevertheless, fiction writing continued to be part of the publishing scene, while drama, not previously a

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strong element in the literary tradition, enjoyed something of a renaissance of its own. Drama scripts do not necessarily achieve book publication, especially immediate publication, yet many of the plays of this period were published by Glasgow publishers such as Gowans and Gray, Walter Wilson and Co., and Maclehose, Jackson and Co., who published Robert Bain’s successful James the First of Scotland in 1921. This upsurge in drama publishing was linked with the growth of the amateur Community Drama Movement and the Scottish National Players, together with the active campaign for a Scottish National Theatre which lasted into the late 1930s. Rhea Denholm’s article ‘The National Theatre Movement’ appeared in the Scots Magazine in July 1924 and was subsequently published in pamphlet form. In the 1920s, fiction did not feature strongly in the Scottish Renaissance programme and many fiction publications related to a career already established with London publishers. For the beginnings of a revitalised fiction publishing, one has to look either to the Scottish Renaissance Highland writer Neil M. Gunn whose career developed most fully in the 1930s and 1940s; or to fiction in the 1920s and 1930s by an increasing number of female writers, as they sought to redefine women’s roles within a changing society. While in its own time this new female fiction may not have appeared central to the literary revival, in retrospect it can be seen as the beginning of a new modern literature by women which is now an essential part of a revitalised Scottish literary scene. The first of these new women writers was Catherine Carswell whose middle-class Glasgow novels Open the Door! and The Camomile were published in London by Andrew Melrose and Chatto and Windus in 1920 and 1922 respectively, thus making them contemporaneous with the beginning of the MacDiarmid-led revival movement. With its modernistic writing style and focus on female sexuality, Open the Door! won the Melrose prize for fiction, although MacDiarmid classified it as a ‘superficial study in personalities’ (Grieve 1926: 311). The Camomile, in epistolary form, did not have the same contemporary success, its title and form perhaps defying the market expectation of fiction by women. Another Glasgow novel which explored female lives and their social context was Dot Allan’s Makeshift (Melrose, 1928), set partially in a contemporary Glasgow office and with a heroine from a lower social class. Closer to Scottish Renaissance expectations in its language and setting was Nan Shepherd’s The Quarry Wood, published by Constable (Edinburgh and London, 1928), which anticipated Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Sunset Song in its plot of a clever girl from a North East Scots-speaking rural background who succeeds in going to university in Aberdeen. Writing in the

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Scots Observer of June 1931, Elizabeth Kyle tells how the book ‘was refused by thirteen publishers who did not know quite what to make of it before being finally accepted by Messrs Constable, who were rewarded for their insight in the book’s instantaneous success.’ She adds that ‘the publishers’ readers who dealt with it were evidently bewildered by the impossibility of fitting it into the hitherto known categories of Kailyardism, Scott Romanticism and House-With-Green-Shutterism, which too often make up the only lines along which the general public imagines all Scots novels should run’ (McCulloch: 204–5). Lorna Moon (Helen Wilson Nora Low) was another writer who challenged ‘Kailyardism’ and expectations of Romantic heroines. Moon’s publication history is unusual in that her short story collection Doorways in Drumorty and her novel Dark Star were written in Hollywood where she was a screenwriter, although in setting both derived from her upbringing in Strichen. Dark Star was published in 1929 by Bobbs-Merrill Co. in Indianapolis and Victor Gollancz in London, and in a letter to her American publisher about comments for the book jacket, Moon wrote: I don’t like the part which says she belongs to the Scottish heroines of literature and that Scott, Stevenson, Barrie would have understood her – because they wouldn’t [. . .] Oh don’t you see that she has all the romance and poetry of bygone heroines, but with it she has the clear thinking bravery of 1929 girlhood’ (McCulloch: 203–4). Such comments point to the difficulties these women fiction writers had in changing the expectations of publishers, although their success, once published, suggests that there was a new reading public ready for them. Nancy Brysson Morrison’s third novel The Gowk Storm became a Book Society Choice when it was published by Collins in 1933. While the book’s poetic narrative style and its poignant story of three sisters who attempt unsuccessfully to break out of their restricted life in a secluded Highland manse is what immediately captures attention, it also offers implicitly a negative critique of Scottish rural life and narrow religious belief which relates to the debates being carried on contemporaneously in the cultural revival movement. Another important female novel of the early 1930s was Willa Muir’s Imagined Corners, begun in St Tropez in 1926 but not published until 1931 by Secker in London. Set in small town ‘Calderwick’ (Montrose), this novel offers an ironic, although sympathetic, exploration of female identity, informed by its author’s interest in psychology, together with a less sympathetic account of Scottish small town life. Mrs Ritchie followed in 1933, a study of a mother who destroys her family through her Calvinistic will to power. In 1938, Catherine Gavin’s first novel, Clyde Valley, published by Barker in London, brought female development scenarios into the contemporary

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urban world of employment and politics by taking her rural Lanarkshire heroine to university in Glasgow during the thirties.

The condition of Scotland: literature and politics in the 1930s One of the outstanding features of the interwar literary revival, and one which makes it different from earlier attempts at cultural renewal in Scotland, was the belief of those involved that there could be no regeneration in the nation’s literary and artistic culture which did not also involve the regeneration of the social, economic and political life of the nation. In the 1930s, therefore, as economic conditions worsened, social and political themes were increasingly taken up by the writers of the time alongside continuing explorations of national identity and literary culture, and expressed in poetry and fiction as well as in discursive essays and books. Much of this discussion of Scottish matters took place in Londonbased periodicals and Scottish books published in London. This publication differed, however, from the situation earlier in the century where serious Scottish, or ‘North British’ work was regularly published in the metropolis. Largely as a result of the revival movement of the 1920s, there now appeared to be a new attitude to Scottish work on the part of London publishing outlets. In October 1933, for example, the Spectator announced an editorial policy of regular coverage of Scottish affairs because ‘developments are in progress in Scotland that are far too little understood or discussed outside Scotland [. . .] The cultivation of Gaelic and the conscious development of a modern Scottish literature are movements demanding not only observation but discussion’ (The Spectator, 6 October 1933: 434). Many of Edwin Muir’s articles on Scottish literature, such as his ‘Literature in Scotland’ of May 1934, were published in the Spectator, as were reviews of Scottish work by Catherine Carswell. MacDiarmid’s essay ‘English Ascendancy in British Literature’ was published in Eliot’s Criterion in 1931, a companion piece to his ‘The Caledonian Antisyzygy and the Gaelic Idea’ published in the St Andrews-based Modern Scot in the same year. In 1934 Routledge initiated the Voice of Scotland series, under the general editorship of Lewis Grassic Gibbon and with contributors who were themselves mostly creative writers. This series, which was taken over by MacDiarmid when Gibbon died in 1935, opened up debates on various aspects of Scottish culture through books such as MacDiarmid and Gibbon’s Scottish Scene of 1934, William Power’s Literature and Oatmeal (1935), Edwin Muir’s Scott and Scotland, Willa Muir’s Mrs

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Grundy in Scotland, Compton Mackenzie’s Catholicism in Scotland, all published in 1936. George Malcolm Thomson’s Caledonia or The Future of the Scots (Kegan Paul, 1927) and Andrew Dewar Gibb’s Scotland in Eclipse (Humphrey Toulmin, 1930) had ushered in the 1930s through their acute analyses of Scotland’s social, economic and cultural problems (although in our own period the notoriety derived from sections on Irish immigration and the Glasgow slums has tended to overshadow their other topics). MacDiarmid’s Albyn or Scotland and the Future (1927) was advertised by Toulmin as a response to Caledonia. In 1932 David Cleghorn Thomson edited the more culturally-oriented Scotland in Quest of her Youth: A Scrutiny, published by Oliver & Boyd in Edinburgh, with contributions from writers such as George Blake, Catherine Carswell, Neil Gunn and Naomi Mitchison. Catherine Carswell herself had challenged literary traditions with her biography of Robert Burns, published by Collins in 1930, a book which caused a furore in the correspondence columns of the Daily Record when the newspaper printed pre-publication extracts. Muir’s Scottish Journey (Heinemann, 1935) combined the social and economic with the literary and philosophical in its author’s travels from the Borders to the Orkneys, while his controversial Scott and Scotland (1936) contrasted past and present literary activity and investigated the ‘emptiness’ he found at the heart of both Walter Scott and Scotland’s cultural identity. The decade ended with the reissue in 1938 of George Blake’s Heart of Scotland, first published by Batsford in 1934, which found the questions previously raised about Scotland’s future ‘grimmer than ever’ (Blake, 1938: xi); and with MacDiarmid’s The Islands of Scotland (Batsford, 1939) which aimed ‘to try to expose through the physical form the spiritual meaning of Scotland today’ (MacDiarmid, 1939: xix). The small magazine culture also changed in the 1930s. After a series of personal and employment difficulties resulting from his ‘emigration’ to London in 1929 to work on Compton Mackenzie’s short-lived Vox magazine, MacDiarmid was living on the small Shetland island of Whalsay, with no periodical under his control. His avant-garde role was taken up, importantly although less vociferously, by the Modern Scot, edited by James Whyte in St Andrews from 1930 to 1936. In 1936 The Modern Scot merged with the Scottish Standard to found Outlook, which itself ceased publication in 1937. Outlook achieved some notoriety through its printing of pre-publication excerpts from Edwin Muir’s Scott and Scotland with its advocacy of the use of the English language and tradition in writing: a position which caused a breach between Muir and MacDiarmid that was never healed. This, however, was not

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a continuation of the creative language debates of the 1920s, but a more negative controversy, owing much to personal artistic insecurity and a lack of critical and financial support in Scotland. Among the most important periodical contributions of the 1930s were the articles written by Neil M. Gunn in the Scots Magazine, a small magazine of Scottish rural life which attained a kind of Scottish Renaissance status under the editorship of J. B. Salmond by virtue of Gunn’s energetic writing about literature, national politics and the need for regeneration of the Highlands. Although more in the format of a newspaper than that of a literary or cultural magazine, the Free Man, founded by Robin Black in 1932, and ‘attached to no party, nor [. . .] thirled to any particular policy’, included a wide range of social, economic and cultural articles analysing Scotland’s current situation and proposing remedies, including the series Whither Scotland? in October 1932 with contributions from literary figures including Edwin Muir, Naomi Mitchison, Eric Linklater, William Soutar, Compton Mackenzie and the editor of the Modern Scot James Whyte (McCulloch: 242). The Free Man was also important for its several articles on the decline of Gaelic and proposals for its regeneration, together with its questioning of the operation and achievements of Highland cultural organisations such An Comunn and the Gaelic Mod. In August 1938, MacDiarmid finally returned to periodical publication with the Voice of Scotland. In the context of the menace from fascism in Europe and the prospect of a second World War, this was more political than literary in orientation, although literary matters still had a place. It ceased publication on the outbreak of war in 1939 to return in a different format in the postwar period. The social and political debates were taken up also in creative writing. Of poets publishing in the 1930s, MacDiarmid was most overtly political in his themes. To Circumjack Cencrastus (1930) was the last collection published by Blackwood who rejected a contemporaneous proposal for a collection titled Fier comme un Ecossais. Political collections such as his First Hymn to Lenin and other Poems of 1931 and its Second Hymn successor of 1935 were published in London by Unicorn and Nott respectively, with Stony Limits and Other Poems published by Gollancz in 1934 and a Selected Poems by Macmillan in the same year. The predominantly Scots-language Scots Unbound and Other Poems (1932) was published by Aeneas Mackay in Stirling. Despite his isolation in the Shetlands, MacDiarmid’s literary production in the 1930s demonstrated an increasing public profile in London, again evidence of the impact made by the literary revival movement in the previous decade.

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Edwin Muir continued to be published in London, with Faber the publisher of his poetry from the Journeys and Places collection of 1937 onwards and his novels The Three Brothers (1931) and Poor Tom (1932), published by Heinemann and Dent respectively. Scots-language poetry collections of the period included Up the Noran Water by Helen Cruickshank, published in London by Methuen in 1934, Marion Angus’s The Turn of the Day (Porpoise Press, 1931) and her last collection Lost Country published by Gowans & Gray in Glasgow in 1937. William Soutar came to greater public attention with his Seeds in the Wind: Poems in Scots for Children published in Edinburgh by Moray Press in 1933, followed by two further Scots-language collections in 1935 and 1937. His poetry in English was published in London. Although there were obviously exceptions, Scots-language poetry publication in Scotland and work in English (often by the same poet) published in London seems to have become a recurring pattern. As in the 1920s, a number of drama scripts with a specifically Scottish context and linked to the Community Drama movement and other national companies, continued to achieve print publication. These included Neil Gunn’s Back Home, published by Wilson in Glasgow in 1932, and Choosing a Play: A One-Act Comedy of Community Drama, published in 1935 by Porpoise Press. However, his Old Music and Net Results, still with Scottish Highland themes, were published by Nelson in London in 1939, which may reflect Gunn’s growing reputation as a Faber fiction author. Robert McLellan’s The Changeling: A Border Comedy in One Act was published in 1934 by Porpoise Press, but his most famous play Jamie the Saxt, first performed in Glasgow in 1937, was not published until 1970. George Reston Malloch’s Prologue to Flodden, was published by Aeneas Mackay in Stirling. In contrast, James Bridie’s more sophisticated plays continued to be performed in West End London and published by Constable. Fiction played a more active part than poetry or drama in the examination of the condition of Scotland in the thirties. Neil Gunn and Lewis Grassic Gibbon were the most significant fiction writers to be associated specifically with the revival movement, although Gibbon, who burst on to the literary scene in 1932 with the much acclaimed Sunset Song, published in London by Jarrolds, was tragically short-lived. His trilogy, A Scots Quair, took the story of Scotland from a declining rural north-east setting in the years leading up to World War One, to a small factory town, and, finally, into the urban working-class context of ‘Duncairn’, an amalgam, perhaps, of Dundee and Aberdeen, where he had worked as a young journalist. It thus engaged not only with ‘condition of Scotland’ debates, but also with Marxist politics and, aesthetically, with attempts

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to revive the vernacular for literary purposes through its modernistic narrative voice. Neil Gunn continued to explore themes of Highland decline and possibilities for regeneration. Morning Tide (1931) was a London Book Society Choice and this was followed by The Lost Glen (1932), Sun Circle (1933), Butcher’s Broom (1934) and Highland River (1937), all published by Porpoise Press in its new association with Faber. Highland River, whose success enabled Gunn to take up full-time writing, set a new pattern for his future Highland books in its positive focus on the values of the Highland experience and what it had to offer the modern world. Other writers who took up issues directly related to the revival movement were Fionn MacColla (Tom Macdonald) and Eric Linklater. The Albannach by MacColla, a Gaelic learner who made important contributions to the Gaelic language debates in the Free Man in the early thirties, was published in London by John Heritage in 1932. Eric Linklater’s Men of Ness and Magnus Merriman, the latter an ironic critique of the Scottish Renaissance and MacDiarmid in particular, were published in London by Cape in 1932 and 1934 respectively. There had been a strong ‘school’ of Glasgow fiction from the early years of the century, and in the 1930s Glasgow again provided the setting for new fiction explicitly concerned with the social, economic and political problems of the time. Neil Gunn’s 1938 novel Wild Geese Overhead and Edwin Muir’s Poor Tom both included sections on Glasgow slums and socialist politics, while Dot Allan’s Hunger March (Hutchinson, 1934), James Barke’s Major Operation (Collins, 1936) and George Blake’s The Shipbuilders (Faber, 1935) are strong Glasgow novels of class politics and social concerns. 1935 was also the year of Alexander Macarthur and H.K. Long’s infamous No Mean City, published by Longmans Green in London. Although not exhaustive in relation to Scottish fiction publishing generally in the 1930s, the above listings present a representative selection of the two most dominant themes in Scottish literary publishing of the period: the continuing preoccupation with a distinctive Scottish identity and its expression in literature; and the increasing concern with the exploration of economic deprivation and class politics in Scotland. As Edwin Muir said of the new writers in his Spectator article ‘Literature in Scotland’ (1934), ‘these writers address themselves first of all to a Scottish audience and not incidentally, as their predecessors did’ (McCulloch: 100). This escape from a previous North British mentality was in itself a not insignificant achievement for the interwar literary movement as it struggled to address the problems of the thirties. Nor did it preclude publication in London, still the dominant publishing venue at the end of the thirties.

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Figure 3.9 Naomi Mitchison in Botswana, 1962.

Naomi Mitchison (1897–1999) Truth is the hardest thing to be sure of The hardest bird to catch . . . (Naomi Mitchison, ‘The Sophist in Love’, 1928) Naomi Mitchison, only daughter of John Scott Haldane, Scottish physiologist, and Louisa Kathleen Coutts Trotter of Scots-Irish-Jewish background, was born on 1 November 1897 at 10 Randolph Cresent in Edinburgh. (For biographical information see Maslen 2005; Benton 1990; Calder 1997; Murray 2002: 67–109). Biographers Jill Benton and Jenni Calder have noted the formative and intense sibling rivalry as well as a≠ection between Naomi and her older brother Jack (1892–1964) (see Benton: 53 and Calder: 13). In childhood her reading included Scots fairy tales from George Macdonald, mythologies set out in W. G. Frazer’s The Golden Bough and Andrew Lang’s translations. A significant influence in her life was Elizabeth Haldane (Aunt Bay) of Cloan Estate near Gleneagles, translator of Hegel, biographer of Descartes, James F. Ferrier and Goethe as well as George Eliot and Mrs Gaskell; an active feminist who introduced her to Andrew Lang, writer of fairy tales and translator of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.

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Educated in Oxford at the Dragon School (1904–11), by governesses (1911–14) and as a home student (later at St Anne’s College who elected her as an honorary fellow in 1980), she wrote a play Saunes Bairos: A Study in Recurrence (1913) and poems for Fritillary and Home Student magazine (Benton: 22). She wrote to The Oxford Times under a number of assumed names proposing that a League of Nations would need to be given extensive powers (Mitchison 1975: 153). After nursing at St Thomas’ Hospital, London she married, on 11 February 1916, Gilbert Richard (Dick) Mitchison, lawyer, and Labour MP for Kettering (1945) and life peer (1964); and they had seven children. As for other writers acknowledged as members of the twentieth-century Scottish Renaissance, Eric Linklater, Hugh MacDiarmid and Neil Gunn, drama – a lifelong passion – poetry and politics shaped her writing. Her essentially romantic narratives couched ‘human conduct’ and issues of contemporary sexuality in Arthurian, Greek and Roman, Icelandic, Norse, Scottish and African histories (Benton: 60). Firstly in cosmopolitan Oxford and London, then travelling abroad, holidaying and later as a landowner in Scotland, Mitchison’s life and fiction fused her experiences. A woman, wife of a lawyer – by definition dedicated to social justice – a mother and politically engaged citizen she wrote stories, novels, plays, poems, biographies and diaries. She submitted her first novel simply by post to three publishers who rejected it until Jonathan Cape (allegedly prone to ‘fatherly pawings’) and Edward Garnett (asking if she was Irish) accepted it (Benton: 76). The Conquered (1923) located in first-century Gaul metaphorically discussed Irish independence and led to her award of O∞cier d’Académie Française in 1924. On the founding council of Kensington Women’s Welfare Centre (1924) Mitchison’s ideals, partly drawn for William Morris, merged liberal feminism with radical Labour socialism. She worked at explaining these ideals in an invented classical world of Cloud Cuckoo Land (1925). Black Sparta (1928) comprised stories and poems written for Nation, the Weekly Westminster, London Mercury, the Spectator and Atlanta’s Garland (see also Smith 1926; which was designed by artist Cecile Walton, and included a number of strong articles and contributions from Hugh MacDiarmid and Edwin Muir). Barbarian Stories (1929) a collection of articles from the Saturday Westminster, Queen, the Golden Hind and Liberal Woman’s News, showed how Cape capitalised on her work in progress. As a ‘modern’ woman already committed to prolific writing and campaigning, when her first son died she immersed herself in work. Writing for the Realist, she met Wystan Auden who tutored her son Murdoch (1929). Commenting on her novel The Corn King and the Spring

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Queen (1931) he said he liked it ‘very much indeed’ but opined she was ‘using those silly old Greeks as a symbol’ (Mitchison 1986: 121). She collaborated with Eric Kennington on The Powers of Light (1932) a narrative of primitivism and the pantheistic forces uniting a woman ‘Fire Head’ with a male ‘Surprised One’ in the face of conventional social forces or ‘Them’. Published by Pharos and printed by J. & J. Gray of Edinburgh its vivid blue and green endpapers and eight coloured pages illustrated figures in this ‘natural community’. After reviewing Wyndham Lewis’ The Apes of God she collaborated with him on a surreal ‘fairy tale’, published as Beyond this Limit by Jonathan Cape (1935). Lady Rhondda, feminist editor of Time and Tide, enlisted Mitchison to review a number of French books in the 1930s as well as those of Wyndham Lewis. Lewis’ ideas contrasted substantially to Naomi’s own socialist ideals and although he made several portraits of Naomi and drawings of her children their relationship faded. See Naomi Mitchison 1986: 143–52. She wrote plays and stories for children, including ‘My Ain Sel’ which she noted is ‘meant to be acted . . . in a field or garden in Scotland or wherever there are Scots’ (see Mitchison 1928). Victor Gollancz asked her to edit papers for a socialist educational programme, An Outline for Boys and Girls (1932) illustrated by William Kermode and Ista Brouncker. Arnold Lunn roundly condemned it on religious grounds. Her novel We Have Been Warned (1935), chapters of which were published in The Oxford Outlook and The Modern Scot, resulted from a Fabian delegation visit to the Soviet Union in 1932. Later she told Isobel Murray that Dione, its Scottish heroine, had a view of Scottish nationalism that ‘tended to be a rather sort of romantic thing’ (Murray 2002: 87). Unromantic details about contraception, marriage and rape in her manuscript elicited a rapid rejection from Cape. Ultimately Constables accepted an edited version in 1935 and the following year it produced The Fourth Pig, an anthology of articles from the New Statesman and Nation and Time and Tide about a campaigning Labour candidate. (The hero Tom is loosely based on her husband who had in 1935 published his book The First Workers’ Government.) Embodying drama and rhetoric in political activity she starred in The Road to Hell produced by the Socialist Film Council (1933), took funds to persecuted Jewish socialists in Austria as recorded in Vienna Diary (1934) and stood as Labour candidate for the Scottish Universities parliamentary seat (1935). She noted later that ‘I began to get the feeling that I was indeed a Scot and that Scottish Nationalism had some meaning’ (Mitchison 1986, 204). Her campaign leaflet proclaimed: A word to Scottish Nationalists! I believe in cultural nationalism as opposed to imperialism, the real and important aims of Nationalism

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can only be attained and put into practice through Socialism. Under the present system, Scotland can never hope for real freedom.5 Having lost the election, she travelled that year to the US with Zita Baker and lobbied for improved conditions for American sharecroppers. But after the death of her father and her Aunt Bay (Elizabeth Haldane) the Mitchisons bought the estate of Carradale in Scotland, which adjusted her sights more specifically to Scottish issues; and some of her plays were broadcast by the BBC. In The Moral Basis of Politics (1938) dedicated to her father she observed that nationalism ‘is a fairly modern growth . . . not a necessary part of the feudal vision’ but averred: Anyone who has ever worked with nationalists will realize . . . it seems possible for one movement (such as Scottish Nationalism) to include people with utterly di≠erent sets of ideas and visions and desires, and nothing can be said about them except that they are certain to quarrel. (Mitchison 1938: 64) Nevertheless from 1939 onwards she fished and farmed in Scotland. Like Wendy Wood or Margaret Leigh she wrote about the experience of learning to farm croftlands, celebrating the excitement of fishing at night in The Alban Goes Out, illustrated by Gertrude Hermes and published by the Raven Press (1939). During the Second World War Mitchison wrote mainly in her Mass Observation diaries, started for Tom Harrison (1937), but found time to support John MacCormick as a local SNP candidate. (For a commentary on the Mass Observation archives held in Sussex University, see Sheridan). When war ended, as a member of the Scottish Convention with Robert Britton and George Kilgour she drafted a Scottish programme for Re-educating Scotland (1944) joining the Argyll County Council (1945–8 and 1951–64), Highland Panel (1947–65) and Highlands and Islands Development Consultative Council (1966–76). An active protagonist for art and writing in Scotland, Mitchison maintained steady output for the New Statesman and a range of stories for children and adults. Crossing continents she extended the international role of a Scottish woman writer working to create the ideal ‘equalitarian’ global society which she had theorised. Rosemary Addison

1940–1945 The outbreak of a Second World War brought an interruption in literary publishing in all genres and effectively brought to an end the first 5

NLS 6.2398.

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phase of the Scottish Renaissance movement. Although Neil Gunn and to a greater extent Edwin Muir published much of their best creative writing from 1940 onwards, consistently supported by Faber, MacDiarmid’s publication was especially affected by war conditions. His ‘Mature Art’ project had been accepted by Jack Kane of the Obelisk Press in Paris in 1939, but publication failed to materialise after the outbreak of war and it was broken up, with fragments published where and when possible. Similarly, The Battle Continues, his angry response to Roy Campbell’s support of the fascists in Spain, did not achieve publication until 1956, when its impact was largely lost. His autobiography Lucky Poet was, however, published by Methuen in 1943 and contained a long chapter titled ‘The Kind of Poetry I Want’, another example of material unable to find publication elsewhere. Naomi Mitchison’s important historical novel The Bull Calves, written in Carradale during the war years, had to wait until 1947 for publication by Cape. By 1940, altered social priorities did not encourage the continuation of previous literary preoccupations. New ways forward had to be found, yet the writers who were to become the new voices of the forties and later decades did not generally achieve first publication until after 1945. One exception was the Gaelic poet Sorley MacLean whose Dàin do Eimhir agus Dàin eile was published in Glasgow in 1943 by William Maclellan, who was later to publish MacDiarmid’s In Memoriam James Joyce in 1955. The Scottish Renaissance had achieved much, not least in the perception that there could be a self-determining Scottish writing of quality in poetry, fiction and drama, directed towards Scottish affairs yet invigorated by international influences as well as by interactive debates in small magazines, however short-lived. As so often in the past, what was still missing was the development of a Scottish-oriented book publishing industrywhich would support a revitalised Scottish writing through publication in Scotland. The appearance in Glasgow in the early 1940s of William Maclellan as publisher, together with Poetry Scotland, a series of anthologies edited by Maurice Lindsay and published by Maclellan between 1943 and 1949, opened up the possibility of new developments in literary publishing in the postwar years.

Literary Publishing: 1945–2000 Jane Potter There is reason for the Scot to be proud of the publishing record of our small country. (Macleod 1953: 24) Scottish literature in the aftermath of the Second World War was characterised by a gradual turning away from the Renaissance ideals espoused by MacDiarmid. Much fiction and poetry of the 1950s and 1960s, while continuing to experiment with Scots and Gaelic, expressed scepticism and disillusionment, and exuded a bleakness that influenced the writing of subsequent decades. George Mackay Brown, Iain Crichton Smith, Norman MacCaig, and Edwin Morgan were arguably the leading figures in what was a new literary well-spring, rooted in both the rural landscapes of the Highlands and Islands and the urban environs of Glasgow and Edinburgh. Lyrical and realistic voices in traditional and experimental forms expressed a new relationship to the past, a questioning of the values of tradition and of modernity, and a desire to forge as well as interrogate ‘Scottish’ identity. The language debate so exhausted by MacDiarmid was given new impetus by Tom Leonard and others in the 1960s when they began to challenge ‘the dictum and authority of received pronunciation, as well as the political assumptions behind it’ (MacDougall: 193). A new commitment to the critical study of Scottish language and literature was seen in the establishment of the School of Scottish Studies at Edinburgh University in 1951. Its press, alongside that of Aberdeen’s, supported this research, while small literary periodicals helped to spread the critical debates and showcase new writing talent. The commercial publishing records of the major literary voices reflect the general situation of Scottish publishing at the time: the 250

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Figure 3.10 Muriel Spark, Passport Photo, 1940s.

literary scene was based in the South. The major Scottish firms all had London o∞ces: ‘[T]he Scotland of today is not a big enough field for an ambitious publishing house’, lamented R. D. Macleod in 1953 (24). Whilst poets such as Crichton Smith, Morgan and MacCaig contributed variously to small Scottish literary magazines, the body of their work was published by large firms, not all with Scottish ancestry and not all with bases in Edinburgh or Glasgow. Mackay Brown, whose first volume of poetry was published in Kirkwall by the Orkney Press, later took his place among the lists of the Hogarth Press, Chatto & Windus, Gollancz and John Murray. Crichton Smith was published by Eyre & Spottiswoode and Gollancz in the 1960s and 1970s and by Carcanet, the Manchester-based publisher in the 1980s. MacCaig was primarily

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published by Chatto & Windus, Morgan by Carcanet. Other writers of these decades reflect a similar pattern. James Kennaway’s work appeared under Longman, Heinemann, and Cape imprints, Muriel Spark’s under Macmillan.

Muriel Spark (1918–2006) The Artist has Canvas The Dreamer has Dreams A Book is the Scholar’s possession . . . (Muriel Camberg, The Door of Youth, 1930) Daughter of Jewish-Scottish Bernard Camberg, engineer and Sarah Elizabeth Uezzell in a capital city traditional in outlook, predominantly Protestant, with imposing façades and green public spaces, Muriel Camberg was born in the year that women householders voted for the first time. At this time, when women negotiated new forms of work, many were considered over-ambitious in challenging social norms, barriers and habits in order to sustain working lives. Women writers of the period such as Naomi Mitchison and Rebecca West were establishing visible roles as novelists and social commentators while a literary establishment remained largely male, although open to influences from cohorts of educated female relatives and friends. If poems drawn from Edinburgh school magazines published in The Door of Youth with a foreword from John Buchan in 1930 authenticated the literary ability of this 12-year old student at James Gillespie’s High School for Girls, they also suggested to her the real prospect of a role as a writer. When, at 15, Muriel Camberg received school prizes of the Oxford Book of Ballads and Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Borders, the prospect of authorship was reinforced. Specifically, these books made a lasting impression as Spark has noted, ‘Lyricism, savagery, revenge; these were the undercurrents of life these ballads taught me . . . the basics of the ballads go through all my works and ways of apprehending’ (Muriel Spark Society Newsletter 1, 2001). After school days, conditioned and socialised by Scottish education but also personally voracious for information, Muriel Camberg studied secretarial skills and then worked in the department store of William Small & Son. After meeting Sydney Oswald Spark at a dance she left Edinburgh to move to Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) where they married on 3 September 1937 and had a son, Robin, born in Bulawayo on 9 July 1938. If the time in Africa was complicated by rejection from teaching, her husband’s declining mental health and hence their divorce, it also provided the

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opportunity to write short stories such as The Seraph and the Zambesi for which she gained the Observer prize for writing in 1951. Leaving Africa on a troop ship bound for Liverpool in 1944, Spark was reunited with her family in Edinburgh briefly before finding herself a job in the Political Intelligence Department of the Foreign O∞ce. Thereafter, writing for Argentor and editing Poetry Review from 1947 to 1949, she continued to write poetry. Subsequent work as a literary editor included critical analyses of poetic works and letters by Wordsworth, Mary Shelley, Emily Brontë and John Masefield (see Spark and Stanford 1950; Spark 1951; Spark 1952a and b; Spark and Stanford 1953a and b; Spark 1953; Spark 1954). Spark developed her own modern, almost forensic scientific investigative methods to assert the importance of the craft of writing to non-Scottish subjects. She wrote of romantics but avoided Victorian sentimentality, conscious of structures and forms of the written craft of making poetry. She experimented with modernist styles that played with forms of logical analysis. She applied distinctly modern forms of direct speech with psychological insight as commentary to Child of Light. She wrote critically of Mary Shelley: aware she was considered a cold unemotional woman . . . in an age when men expected women to studiously reveal a desire to please them, the increasing substantial seriousness of Mary Shelley’s bearing appalled and scared the life out of these friends of earlier, flimsier days. (3) Spark’s critical voice was one aspect of her literary style. More distinctive was her professional expansion beyond Scottish borders, which was often regarded as a turning away from her Scottish connections. David Daiches has referred to the ‘problematical’ sense of identity for novelists after the end of the Second World War (1993: 192). For Spark – apart from her own part-Scottish, part-Jewish, part-Polish background, this sense was complicated by her knowledge of black propaganda perpetrated on behalf of British forces by Sefton Delmar. She came to know German POWs, including double-agents, well, and the sense of perilous identity is parodied in The Hothouse by the East River, first published in 1973. Even when Spark lived outside a Scottish world of legal, medical and scientific investigation, a world that cultivated rigorous academic attitudes, however, one might say that her critical work carried these Scottish characteristics. In a period when she converted to Catholicism (1954) and when she obtained support from Graham Greene as she recovered from the e≠ects of an appetite suppressant, Spark worked in public relations and in publishing houses at the same time as writing her first novel. (This included producing in 1957 the slightly strange study in collaboration with Derek

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Stanford of The Letters of J. H. Newman). The Comforters appeared in 1957 and obtained a favourable review in the Spectator from Evelyn Waugh. Thereafter Robinson (1958), The Go-Away Bird and Other Stories (1958), Memento Mori (1959) adapted as a play in 1964, The Ballad of Peckham Rye (1960) adapted for radio (winning the Italia Prize in 1962), The Bachelors (1960) and Voices at Play (1960) were also published. Childhood memories served as a backdrop for Sparks’ novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1965). The character of Miss Brodie remained a metaphorical monument to Edinburgh schooling in the 1930s but was also the means of exposing Sparks’ sensibility to searching for truth among opposing forces of passion and reason, politics and pragmatism, life and death – the literary or political or personal or Calvinist torments that led the student Sandy to become a Catholic nun. The adaptation of the story for the stage (1966), for cinema (1969) and subsequently for television (1978) show its dramatic, narrative strengths as well as the visual qualities of Sparks’ writing to which Alan Bold (1986) has drawn attention. Her play Doctors of Philosophy appeared in London in 1963. The Girls of Slender Means (1963) was adapted for radio in 1964 and for television in 1975; The Driver’s Seat (1970) was also filmed, in 1974. Sparks’ novel The Abbess of Crewe (1974), was later filmed as Nasty Habits (1977). The Very Fine Clock (1968) illustrated by Edward Gorey, and The French Window and The Small Telephone (1993), a children’s book illustrated from Spark’s doodles by Penelope Jardine for Colophon Press, were followed by Harper and Wilton (1996) and Quest for Lavishes Ghast (1998), also illustrated by Penelope Jardine at the Cuckoo Press for John Sandoe, as limited editions from private presses. Jardine worked on illustrations for a number of Spark’s other works, other including The Finishing School (2004). Muriel Spark’s capacity for work was neither Scottish Calvinist nor Puritan Catholic but emerged as part of the fabric of a dedicated commitment to art, often in adverse conditions, partly explored in novels such as The Girls of Slender Means (1963) and A Far Cry from Kensington (1988) as well as in her autobiography Curriculum Vitae (1992). Spark gifted to the National Library of Scotland a substantial archive: here one can find evidence of Spark’s engagement with short-story writing during her time in Africa in the 1940s; surviving evidence of her critical and editorial work carried out in England; and material relating to the significant commission for her first novel elicited by Alan Maclean of Macmillan, which took place in London (1954). Nevertheless, the axis of Spark’s identity is firmly rooted in Scotland (see Smith 2001). Her reputation and stature in Scotland and abroad can be traced cumulatively from awards such as FRSL (1963); OBE (1967); DBE (1993);

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Hon. D. Litt., Strathclyde (1971); Hon. Member of American Academy of Arts and Letters (1978); D. Litt. at the Universities of Edinburgh (1989), Aberdeen (1995), St Andrews (1998), and a doctorate from Heriot-Watt University (1995); and Commandeur de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France (1996). She was also awarded the Scottish Book of the Year for The Stories of Muriel Spark (1987); the David Cohen British Literary Prize (1997) and the International Gold PEN Award (1998). Spark o≠ered an example of a professional woman writer creating vivid examples of international yet also distinctly Scottish narrative art in her world, whether in New York, Tuscany or just travelling, which she listed with reading as her main recreation in Who’s Who. Rosemary Addison

Yet the relatively stable world of publishing of the 1950s and 1960s, dominated by family-run firms whose working practices had changed very little over the preceding decades, began to fall apart by the mid1970s. Mergers and acquisitions became commonplace and onceindependent houses were swallowed up by large multi-media conglomerates, a trend that reached its apotheosis in the 1980s and 1990s. Scottish publishers and their English counterparts were developing all-new personas or ceasing to exist altogether. Having already merged with Thomson Organisation in the 1962 to take advantage of the global educational books market, Nelsons moved its publishing business permanently to London. It later sold its printing division at Parkside to Morrison & Gibb and jettisoned its American firm in 1969. The new US owner, Royal Publishers Incorporated of Nashville, Tennessee, retained the name Thomas Nelson & Sons. In January 2000, Nelson Thornes was formed by a merger with Stanley Thornes and the company became a subsidiary of the Dutch company Wolters Kluwer. Upon the death of Harold Macmillan in 1986, control of the company went into non-family hands. The family trust sold most of its shares (70.81 per cent) to the German firm Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck in 1995. When the remainder was purchased in 1999, 156 years of family ownership came to an end. Jan Collins sold his shares in the firm to Rupert Murdoch in 1981 and the Collins publishing house was eventually taken over by News International in 1989. Blackie ceased trading in 1991. John Murray survived the longest as a family-run firm, but finally succumbed to takeover by Hodder Headline in 2001.

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There were signs that history might be repeating itself. Commenting on the demise of Porpoise Press when it was bought by Faber & Faber in the 1930s, Alistair McCleery observed: When Scottish publishing loses its identity by transfer of its operations to the wider markets of London, or when it is in a debilitated state, then the unity of Scottish literary culture becomes obscured as individual writers enter lists in which they are submerged and homogenized or in which they are the token Scots, pandering to alien perceptions of Scotland and its people. (McCleery 1988: 91) Yet various developments militated against such a ‘debilitated’ state of Scottish literary publishing. New writing was emerging from all regions of Scotland and publishers both in Scotland and in England began to take this trend seriously (Gi≠ord 2002: 900). Closely connected to the political issues of nationalism and a devolved Scottish parliament, poets and authors from the late 1970s onwards interrogated the idea of ‘nation’ as they questioned the past and tried to create a distinctive Scottish literature for the late twentieth century. ‘The internal reassessment of things Scottish raised the consciousness of the people and a≠ected their visions of life, even outside the ideas of nationalism’ (Richardson: 224).

Akros and Cencrastus The history of the literary journals Akros and Cencrastus threads its way through forty years of literary publishing in Scotland, exemplifying the driving forces, energies and achievements of Scottish literary editors and publishers over the last half of the twentieth century, as well as providing case study examples of the structural problems and financial challenges such regionally based initiatives have encountered. Both journals were launched in a period of Scottish literary hiatus: Akros was started by the editor and publisher Duncan Glen in 1965, and lasted fifty-one issues until 1993; Cencrastus was begun in 1979 and ended with its eighty-second issue in spring 2006. Akros, begun by Glen after several years of book publishing experience, was intended specifically to showcase recent or contemporary Scottish poetry, whether in Scots, English or Gaelic, and to provide a platform for balanced criticism (Price: 33). The name derived from the Greek root meaning ‘highest and furthest out, extreme,’ an indication of the editor’s inclusive intentions and his aspirations to issue finely produced logotyped material, which he typeset and printed himself. When Akros was launched

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in 1965, there were few other Scottish literary magazines in operation, except for the Gaelic magazine Gairm, and the highly praised Lines Review, which was issued on an irregular basis. The first issue of Akros contained several poems by Scottish writers, including Robert Garioch’s ‘At Robert Fergusson’s Grave’, and a reprint of Hugh MacDiarmid’s neglected poem ‘The Burning Passion’. Akros appeared at regular intervals three times a year until October 1982 when it became an annual publication. Its final issue was released in October 1993. Akros frequently was first to feature rising talents in Scottish literature, and also collected together work by established authors. Thus from the seventh issue onwards, Glen produced one-author special issues: authors highlighted in this way included Norman MacCaig, Sydney Goodsir Smith, Edwin Muir and there were two Hugh MacDiarmid double issues. The first double issue (nos 13 and 14, April 1970), consisted of poems by MacDiarmid in Scots, several essays on his work, and a long conversation between MacDiarmid and Glen, accompanied by many early photographs of MacDiarmid. The second double issue (nos 34 and 35, August 1977), celebrated MacDiarmid’s 85th birthday by publishing further poetry of his, as well as a number of evaluatory essays by Kenneth Buthlay, John Herdman and W. R. Aitken. Akros was responsible for recovering many of MacDiarmid’s poems that otherwise would have remained largely forgotten. His early lyrics, discovered amongst letters to MacDiarmid’s schoolmaster George Ogilvie, were also published in the June 1968 and 1969 issues. In addition to issues focusing on individual poets, there were those themed around cultural matters, including one on translation (no. 9, 1968) that carried Iain Crichton Smith’s much praised English version of ‘Ben Dorain’ by Duncan Ban Macintyre, one on visual culture (no. 18, March 1972) and a Sicilian-Scottish issue (no. 27, 1975) containing an impressive list of Sicilian and Scottish poems translated by Nat Scammacca. There were also issues containing essays on American poets, a Gaelic issue, and included throughout many numbers essays on twentieth-century Scottish poetry in Scots and English. The final issue featured poetry and short essays by twenty critics analysing famous twentieth-century Scottish poems. The fortunes and editorial policies of the journal were closely linked to other pamphlet or monograph-length publications by Glen’s Akros Press. Thus poetry that first appeared in the magazine were often reprinted as individual volumes. The first example of this was the pamphlet publication of Edwin Morgan’s Gnomes (twelve gnomic concrete poems) in 1968, one of Morgan’s few early single-authored volumes. Akros Press also launched the Parkland Poets series (1969), which included reprinted work of Edwin

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Morgan, Kenneth Wood and Roderick Watson, and was the first to promote the work of Alistair Mackie, publishing his Soundings in 1996, and the north-east poet Flora Garry, issuing her Bennygoak and Other Poems in 1974 and causing something approaching ‘garrymania’ locally for a period. For George Bruce, the Akros-produced Landscapes and Figures (1967) meant the first collection after a twenty-year long silence, and was key to revitalising critical interest in his poetry. The launch of Cencrastus, the ‘A4 literary quarterly of Scotland’, came in the wake of the failure of the Scottish devolution movement in the 1979 referendum. Cencrastus’ aim was to make a cultural statement on the importance of Scottish culture in all its art forms. The magazine derived its name from the Curly Snake, the Celtic serpent of wisdom, symbol of energy and infinity as envisioned in MacDiarmid’s long poem To Circumjack Cencrastus. Uniquely amongst Scottish literary magazines, Cencrastus did not focus solely on new creative writing; rather, it attempted to give broad coverage to all arts forms in Scotland, including music, drama, theatre, film, but also philosophy and politics. Cencrastus was initially set up as a communally edited journal by its founders – Glen Murray, John Burns, Christine Bold, the late Bill Findlay, Sheila Hearne and Raymond Ross – who were postgraduate students of Scottish literature at Scottish universities. They were assisted in their venture by Father Anthony Ross, the Catholic Chaplain (and later Rector) of Edinburgh University, who had been involved in Scottish International (1968–74), a journal of similar all-inclusive nature whose demise had left a huge gap in Scottish cultural arenas. The magazine’s other early editors included Cairns Craig, now a professor at Aberdeen University, and Geo≠rey Parker. Its last editor, Raymond Ross, took over in 1984 and edited the magazine until its cessation in 2006. Cencrastus’ inaugural issue in autumn 1979 duly reflected its broad perspective, featuring interviews with Margaret Atwood, an article by Anthony Ross on an experimental prison unit and essays by diverse cultural figures such as Jenni Calder and Eduardo Paolozzi. It was launched by a ceilidh with poetry reading by Robert Garioch, Sorley Maclean and Norman MacCaig, whose ‘three voices of Scotland’ demonstrated the journal’s commitment to representing Scotland’s complex cultural heritage. The resurrection of Scottish collective self-confidence always remained on Cencrastus’ agenda, as mainstream publications in the 1980s gave little space to Scottish writing and arts. Cencrastus published excerpts from Neal Ascherson’s devolution diaries as well as other political and historical articles such as Paul H. Scott’s work on the concepts of Britishness (no. 51, spring-summer 1995), Tony Milligan’s article on ‘Adolf ’s Tartan Army’ (no. 51), and Polish ghetto survivors’ memoirs (in issues beyond the time

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scope of this volume). Literary historical essays were published with a view to unearthing and reconsidering neglected authors and new critical perspectives: among the beneficiaries of this were essays by Cairns Craig on Scottish literary history, later republished in his volume Out of History (now a university coursebook). The Cencrastus’ strengths included the coverage given to visual material and visual artists, ranging from comprehensive, historical articles on Scottish painting (no. 15, New Year 1984), to the Joseph Beuys special issue in 2005, which highlighted the contribution of Scotland and its artistic promoters to the international reputation of this German performance artist. Although it did not review Scottish theatre and film productions, Cencrastus did o≠er general critiques and overviews by Jim Gilchrist and Tony McManus of Scottish theatre, film and Scottish music, including traditional music and opera. Special issues were rare, though there were issues on Edwin Morgan (38, 1990), which included an in-depth interview with him by Colin Nicholson, on Iain Crichton Smith (no. 35, Winter 1989) and on Freddie Anderson (no. 37, Summer 1990) Despite the di≠erent foci of these magazines, the material circumstances of their publication processes show much similarity to contemporary Scottish ‘sister magazines’. The emergence of the Scottish Arts Council in 1967 as a major funder of literary magazines and books, led by its respected director Walter Cairns, enabled the launch and survival of many such publications. Thus Akros was funded from issue 6 onwards, and Cencrastus supported from its first issue. With such funding, both were able to play a significant role in disseminating innovative contemporary writing and in reviving the work of past Scottish literary masters. Zsuzsanna Varga The author would like to thank Duncan Glen and Raymond Ross for invaluable help received during the research for this essay

The publication of Alasdair Gray’s Lanark was the watershed of this new writing. In its wake came the black comedy, vernacular urban speech, subversive outlook, disa≠ection and violence that so characterised the novels of James Kelman, William McIlvanney, Irvine Welsh, and Ian Rankin. Women in MacDiarmid’s literary renaissance were noticeable by their absence, but poets such as Liz Lochhead and those who followed her, including Tessa Ransford, Dilys Rose, and Kathleen Jamie, firmly stamped a female voice on the Scottish poetic landscape. Similarly in fiction, 1980s and 1990s were notable for the emergence of women writers like Janice Galloway and A. L. Kennedy.

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Figure 3.11 John Calder at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, 2001.

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Such new writing both energised and was energised by the new Scottish publishing houses that were blossoming. Indeed it has been argued that that ‘the process of amalgamation and conglomeration that has seen dozens of publishing companies swallowed up has created enough space for the shoots of independent growth to grow’ (Scotland on Sunday, 5 March 2000: B.8). By the beginning of the twenty-first century, Scotland boasted eighty-five publishers, the majority based in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and a significant number of which were supported by the Scottish Arts Council. If conglomeration made space for independents to operate, state subsidy gave them financial backing to survive, if not to flourish. The Scottish Arts Council (SAC) was pivotal in rehabilitating and maintaining an indigenous and ‘robust publishing industry’ (SAC 2002–3: 3). Devolved from the Arts Council of Great Britain in 1967, the SAC was able to use its budget autonomously to promote achievement in all areas of the arts. Professing that ‘for a small country, publishers have a vital role in providing a written record of ourselves, both for our own needs, understanding, and enjoyment, and for the world’ (SAC 2004), its bursaries and grants enabled new writing and new critical works to appear from the presses of firms based in Edinburgh, Glasgow and regional cities. The success of such firms as Canongate, Polygon and Birlinn are testament to its investment.

John Calder (1927–) Calder’s father belonged to a Scots brewing/timber family, while his mother was a Canadian heiress. Educated at Ampleforth, McGill and Zurich Universities, and fluent in French and German, Calder (1927–) started John Calder (Publishers) Ltd, in 1949, publishing previously untranslated works by Tolstoy, Chekhov and Dostoevsky, and the first unexpurgated translation of Petronius’ Satyricon. Subsequently he acquired Acorn Press and printed arts journals (Opera and Theatre Annual, Sight and Sound). By 1954, he was involved in the anti-McCarthy movement in New York, publishing an exposé of the Rosenberg trial, books by Alger Hiss (Calderbooks 1) and the economist Paul Baron, and novels by blacklisted authors (Philip Stevenson and Albert Maltz). Calder introduced American large-format ‘egg-head’ paperbacks into Britain, complementing and competing with what had been standard practice of issuing ‘Penguin-sized’ paperbacks. In Paris, Calder met Eugène Ionesco, Marguerite Duras, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Alexander Trocchi and (later) William Burroughs, all of whom he would befriend and go on to publish. In 1955, he saw Peter Hall’s production of Waiting for Godot in London,

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and acted immediately to secure publishing rights. Calder was unsuccessful – Faber & Faber’s o≠er arrived first at Éditions du Minuit – but would meet Beckett and become his lifelong friend. When Faber & Faber found Beckett’s novels unacceptably erotic, Calder expertly pulled o≠ complex negotiations to acquire and publish the Malone trilogy, and ultimately all of Beckett’s prose and poetry. By 1959, Calder’s list comprised about 150 titles, mainly British editions of avant-garde literature in translation (from sources such as Éditions du Minuit). He was quick to recognise the nouveau roman, publishing Robbe-Grillet’s novels and screenplay, as well as emerging British and Irish writers (Arnold Wesker, David Mercer, Aidan Higgins). Political books in the 1950s include Gangrene (Calderbooks 11), Philip NoelBaker’s The Arms Race (Nobel Peace Prize, 1959), and anti-apartheid works. In 1960, Marion Lobbenberg (m. Boyars) joined the firm, which became Calder & Boyars in 1964. From 1961, Calder used his New Writing series to anthologise experimental writing. Other series included Jupiter Books (1963≠.; notable for including Jorge Luis Borges’ Fictions), Playscript (1965≠.), French Surrealism (1970≠.), The Scottish Library (1970–5; including Norman MacCaig and Alex Scott’s Contemporary Scottish Verse; Sidney Goodsir Smith’s Collected Poems), Open Forum (1965≠; political non-fiction) and Ideas in Progress (1968≠.; experimental non-fiction). Calder devised innovative marketing schemes, sending titles to literary figures to create a buzz, and targeting booksellers in new university towns such as Leeds and Cardi≠. In 1960, he organised a lecture tour with three French authors (Robbe-Grillet, Duras, Natalie Sarraute), travelling to venues across the country. To general astonishment, they drew huge young audiences, especially in Coventry, then without a university, and in this fashion Calder developed a new reading audience for his nouveau roman publications. The tour ended at Edinburgh University with a reception at Jim Haynes’ Paperback Bookshop (est. 1957), unique for being Britain’s first bookshop dedicated solely to paperback works, and an important disseminator of Calder’s lists. Calder enthused about the tour to George Harewood, then director of the Edinburgh Festival, and proposed a big literary event for the 1962 Festival. This became the Edinburgh Writers’ Conference at the McEwan Hall. Enlisting support from the British Council and embassies, Calder undertook the gargantuan task of organising about 100 writers, helped by Jim Haynes and Sonia Orwell. Delegates included Burroughs, Mary McCarthy, Henry Miller, Norman Mailer, Rebecca West, Angus Wilson, Stephen Spender; among the Scots were Alexander Trocchi, Hugh MacDiarmid, Edwin Morgan and Naomi Mitchison. Calder orchestrated publicity, sending pseudonymous letters for and against the conference to

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The Scotsman, and drumming up interest through talks and interviews. Each day had a theme: Scottish literature, nationalism, the novel, and (most sensationally) censorship. The conference achieved record audiences and widespread radio and press coverage, making Calder a national celebrity. A drama conference for the 1963 Festival followed, featuring Wole Soyinka, John Arden, Joan Littlewood, Calder authors Ionesco, Robbe-Grillet, Wesker and Robert McLellan, and the first British Happening (Moral Rearmament prosecuted Calder for this), but the event lost money and audiences under Kenneth Tynan’s management. That same year, Calder published Trocchi’s Cain’s Book and Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer (a bestseller); then Tropic of Capricorn (1964), Burroughs’ Naked Lunch (1964) and Hubert Selby jnr’s Last Exit to Brooklyn (1966). These were censored as obscene, and Calder fought several legal actions as a result. This was his golden era as a publisher, one where he promoted his wide cultural vision through tireless activity as arts promoter, dramatist, theatre and opera entrepreneur, lecturer, journalist and parliamentary candidate. Calder began an ancillary career as a bookseller in 1970, starting Better Books in London (Edinburgh branch, 1971–3; Calder Books at Waterloo, 2001≠ ). In 1974, Boyars ended the publishing partnership they had had, the archives were sold to Indiana University to finance restructuring, the list was split, and Calder’s company returned to its previous name. In the 1980s and 1990s, Calder started a new series, Platform Books and an American imprint (Riverrun Press); with a reduced list, he survived the virtual collapse of Arts Council support for literary publishing in the late part of the century. Calder was arguably the most important independent publisher of the post-war era. His innovations were practical and imaginative, and included introducing novel paperback formats, championing free speech, and broadening readership demographics through dramatisation, debate and performance. He was imbued with a Reithian belief in the transformative power of serious art. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, his publishing and artistic legacy remained formidable still. Louise Milne

Based in Edinburgh, Canongate boasts a ‘distinctly international outlook’. Independent since 1994, the publisher has had continuous support from the Scottish Arts Council. With ‘no specific agenda other than to promote and publish challenging, quality work from as broad a perspective as we are able’ Canongate argues that ‘the net o≠ers an important medium for independent houses’ in the face of multinational

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conglomerate domination of publishing. The firm has been crucial to the new Scottish literary renaissance of the 80s and 90s. Equally influential was Polygon. Owned in the 1980s by the Edinburgh University Students Association, it published the early work of Ian Rankin, James Kelman, Janice Galloway, Tom Leonard, Liz Lochhead and Alexander McCall Smith. In 2002 it became an imprint of the larger Scottish firm Birlinn. Founded in 1992 by Hugh Andrew, Birlinn later made its headquarters in an old Nelson residence in Edinburgh. Taking its name from the Old Norse word for a small cargo-ship, Birlinn used the maritime logo because ‘it’s a strong symbol of our past, of the powerful sea-faring nation we were once, and of the many people who have left these shores to settle throughout the world’. In addition to Polygon, Birlinn acquired the Tuckwell Press (academic) and the John Donald Press (academic books on Scottish subjects). The other major Scottish player, Mainstream, founded in Edinburgh in 1978, was one of a few businesses to request only limited SAC funding, though it has had a number of Scottish corporate sponsors including the Bank of Scotland, Bell’s Whisky, Famous Grouse, the Royal Bank of Scotland and the National Trust for Scotland. With a particular emphasis on non-fiction, Mainstream boasts authors such as Emma Tennant, Henry McLeish, Les McKeown, Hunter Davie and Wayne McCulloch as well as literary prizes such as the William Hill Sports Book of the Year, the Saltire Society First Book Award and the McVitie Prize for Best Scottish Book.

Literary prizes In 1994 Britain’s highest-profile literary award, the Booker Prize, was conferred upon James Kelman for his novel How Late It Was, How Late. The decision was controversial. The Times dubbed the award to Kelman an act of ‘literary vandalism’ (15 October); one of the panel’s judges expressed her public dissent from the choice; and the book’s profanity and its supposedly incomprehensible Scots dialect provoked much media comment. Yet the win was also a cause for Scottish celebration, and an occasion for Kelman to make a speech proclaiming the value of indigenous culture against the ‘imperial or colonial authority’ (The Times, 16 October 1994). With this award, prizes were unequivocally made political. Kelman is only one in a sequence of ‘scandalous’ Booker winners, which have, ironically, done much to raise the profile and prestige of the prize (English; The Man Booker Prize 2003: 62–6). The award to

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Kelman, however, was indicative of another trend, and emblematic of the role literary prizes frequently play in constructing literary and national culture. That trend was for a perceived Scottish literary renaissance, which developed from the stylistic tendencies and subject matter of earlier writers such as Hugh MacDiarmid and Alasdair Gray, but was pushed to the fore in the 1990s by writers including Kelman, Irvine Welsh, Alan Warner, Duncan McLean, A. L. Kennedy and Je≠ Torrington, who won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award in 1992 for Swing Hammer Swing!. During the 1990s, Scottish literature, culture and nationality came to be seen in the London-based media as fashionable, cutting-edge and counter-cultural. This occurred at the same time as growing Scottish nationalism, with demands for devolution and a Scottish parliament to counteract the London government, then ruled by a Conservative Party who had scarcely any members of parliament representing Scottish constituencies. An award-winning representation of working-class Scottish life symbolised an appropriation of the English literary and political heartland. The Man Booker Prize (as it was called after 2002) has returned to Scotland since Kelman’s win – to Canongate, the Edinburgh-based publisher of the Canadian Yann Martel’s The Life of Pi in 2002. Yet the Booker is an award which, although open to writers from all of Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth, is very much based in London, the centre of the UK publishing industry. Its outreach and impact may be international but its administration and judging processes are undoubtedly centred on England, and metropolitan England at that. So what of literary prizes that are administered in Scotland, or whose eligibility requirements are specifically centred on Scottish criteria? The James Tait Black Memorial Prizes – one for the best biography, the other for the best novel – can lay claim to being amongst the oldest of British literary awards. First awarded in 1919, they pre-date the Booker Prize by several decades, and the list of fiction winners demonstrates a flair for picking future classics, including D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster, Aldous Huxley, Graham Greene and William Golding. As this list of writers makes evident, Scottish nationality is not a requirement. The Scottishness of the prizes stems from their administration via the University of Edinburgh Department of English Literature. The lack of media razzmatazz surrounding the prizes also make them a very di≠erent entity from the Booker. Their distance from London and their seeming lack of controversy both reduce their visibility, but also, arguably, lend them a quiet authority in a world of contested literary value (Stevenson 2000). Other literary prizes based in Scotland have a more specific agenda to promote Scotland and its writers. The Saltire Society Scottish Literary

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Awards, for example, have a brief to award ‘any book by an author or authors of Scottish descent or living in Scotland, or for any book which deals with the life of a Scot or with a Scottish question, event or situation’ (www.saltiresociety.org.uk/literary.htm). The Saltire Society eligibility criteria are broad, encompassing national identity, residency and subject matter. As such, the awards simultaneously promote Scottish writing and interrogate the notion of Scottish writing: what does it mean to be a Scottish writer? These literary awards attempt both to promote Scotland as a theme, and also those who live within, or who have come from within, its borders. The Scottish Arts Council Book Awards and the now defunct Stakis Scottish Writer of the Year have similar aims. On the announcement of the inaugural shortlist for the Scottish Arts Council Awards in 2002, it was hoped that the prizes would: help raise the profile and prestige of Scotland’s thriving literary culture. They recognise one of the country’s principal national assets: her writers . . . These are Scottish books and they reflect our mature, outward looking and inclusive culture. Read and enjoy them – you’ll be proud of our writers. (www.scottisharts.org.uk/1/latestnews/1001704. aspx) Literary prizes, then, play an important part in developing a sense of a national literature and national identity, be it by their authors’ background or connections, or by the subject matter of the writing. Scottish literature is promoted as a category, though as the slightly torturous eligibility requirements of some of these awards show, defining such a category is a complex process. Nonetheless, a survey of Scottish literary awards and the Scottish winners of cross-border awards illuminate the development of national identity via literature and literary institutions, and the construction of concepts of literary value. Claire Squires

These large firms have not been alone in promoting Scottish literature in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The number of smaller publishers has increased enormously since the 1980s, due in no small part to SAC grants and subsidies. The Luath Press, publishing a range of books including fiction, was established in 1981 in Barr, Ayrshire, the ‘heart of Burns country’. In 1997 it relocated to o∞ces in Edinburgh’s Royal Mile. The Mercat Press, founded in 1970 as part of the former bookselling chain James Thin (it became an independent company in 2002), focuses on history, rural

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life, biography, and walking and outdoor pursuits, while the Mariscat Press, launched by Hamish Whyte in Glasgow in 1982 boasts poetry collections by Edwin Morgan, A. L. Kennedy, and Gael Turnbull. The poetry publisher Kettilonia has since 1999 sought to bring ‘original, adventurous, neglected and rare writing into print’. It was praised by the literary magazine North Words: ‘At a time when the poetry equivalent of the corporate big boys are playing it safer than ever, it’s a genuine cause for rejoicing that small presses in Scotland can produce work of this quality.’ In 1999 the SAC awarded Neil Wilson Publishing £224,500 of National Lottery money to launch its contemporary fiction imprint 11–9 (named after the date of the successful referendum on Scottish devolution, though now suspended partly to avoid association with the New York Twin Towers bombing known as 9/11). All of the above firms are members of the Scottish Publishers Association, founded in 1973 to assist publishers in the marketing and promotion of their books. It too receives SAC funding, as do a number of other organisations: Scottish Book Trust, the national agency for the promotion of reading and writing; the Gaelic Books Council (Comhairle nan Leabhraichean); the Scots Language Resource Centre; the Scottish Poetry Library, founded in 1984 to collect, for research and leisure, contemporary and historical poetry written in Scotland, in Scots, Gaelic or English; the Scottish Storytelling Centre; and the Association for Scottish Literary Studies (ASLS), which promotes the scholarly study of Scottish literature and language in schools and higher education institutions and publishes a yearly anthology of fiction and poetry entitled New Writing Scotland. One of the most important beneficiaries of SAC subsidy has been the ‘little’ literary magazine, an essential outlet for and showcase of Scottish writers. Since the late 1960s, ‘the grants given to magazines by the SAC have . . . transformed the Scottish literary magazine scene’ (Glen 1999: 141). Among the most prominent are Akros and Cencrastus, discussed in more detail in this volume, Lines Review, Lallans, Chapman, and Verse. Founded in 1952 by Callum Macdonald, Lines Review (last issue, no. 144, March 1998) provided ‘a lifeline’ for poets in Scotland at a time when there were few publishing outlets. Hugh MacDiarmid, Sydney Goodsir Smith, Alexander Scott, Robert Garioch, Sorley Maclean, Norman MacCaig, Derick Thomson, Iain Crichton Smith, and Edwin Morgan were among those who found a place in the pages of the magazine. Lines Review began in the days before subsidies and Macdonald bore the brunt of the costs and di∞culties of publication for over twenty

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years. It received an SAC grant of £1,500 in 1972. The magazine went through various creative incarnations thanks to the range of editors, each of whom brought their individual ideas, including Sidney Goodsir Smith, J. K. Annand and Robin Fulton. Lallans is the journal of the Scots Language Society, founded 1972, under the name of the Lallans Society. The society aimed to resurrect Scots from its ‘couthie’ image perpetuated by Burns enthusiasts and Kailyard parochialism and show that it was a vibrant language as well an important part of national cultural heritage. J. K. Annand, editor for ten years, set out his editorial policy for the only magazine to be published entirely in Scots: ‘Lallans’ll ne’er regain the stature o a rale language till we hae a hantle-sicht mair prose-writin nor we hae the day, and sae we sall gie the gree til prose’. The magazine published such poets as Robert Garioch, Alistair Mackie, Tom Hubbard, J. K. Annand, Hugh MacDiarmid, Edwin Morgan and Sydney Goodsir Smith (Purves: 3). ‘Like many literary magazines, Chapman was born out of frustration at not getting su∞cient access to the oxygen of publication’ (Hendry: 3). It was founded in 1970 by George Hardie, who was soon joined by Walter Perrie. After the first few issues, an application was made for help from the SAC, which was rejected. Perrie published a vitriolic editorial in issue 6 stating ‘Even should we starve to death, we will do so fighting the regime and its sundry cliques.’ Eventually the magazine was awarded £100 and larger issues were then able to be published. Joy Hendry, who joined Perrie as editor after Hardie moved on to other activities, has written of the di∞culties of being a young female editor in the late 1970s and of her goals for the magazine. While remaining committed to publishing new writers, Hendry broadened the scope of Chapman to include more established writers and discussion on diverse topics from education to music. She made sure each issue had work in Scots and Gaelic and that it did its bit to rectify the marginalisation of women in Scottish literary culture. The ‘landmark number’, ‘Woven by Women’, was a double issue (Hendry: 3). Moreover, under the imprint of Chapman publishing, the Chapman New Writers series was launched to highlight ‘good authors’ first books’. Although it eventually ‘came home’ to Scotland, Verse was started south of the border in 1983 by two Scottish postgraduates at Oxford, David Kinloch and Robert Crawford. Kinloch recalls that ‘We wanted to create something that would place Scottish writing firmly in an international context, a window through which that kaleidoscope of foreign faces could look at us and one which would present Scotland to the world’ (Kinloch: 3). With SAC funding from the beginning, Verse set

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about publishing the poetry of Alasdair Gray, Edwin Morgan, Iain Crichton Smith, Donald Hall, Richard Kenney and Seamus Heaney, as well as translations, interviews with poets and critical essays. It was also among the first to promote the work of Simon Armitage, Glyn Maxwell, Don Paterson and John Burnside. It had an American editor based in the USA further emphasising its international outlook. Other literary periodicals regularly supported by the SAC include The Eildon Tree, The Dark Horse, The Drouth, Edinburgh Review, Markings, Northwords Now and Textualities. Their and other Scottish publishers’ success is not only due to state subsidy and promotion. New media and the world wide web have been crucial tools for the indigenous industry. They have meant that ‘the literary scene’ does not need to be confined to big cities like Edinburgh (Gi≠ord 2002: 997). Moreover, they have also meant the literary scene need not be confined to the bookshop, literary festival or library. Scottish Pamphlet Poetry is an important website founded in 1999 that aims to promote a resurgence of the once-influential literary format. Funded in part by the Callum Macdonald Memorial Fund, it advertises the publications of such small firms as Akros, Celtic Nomad, Kettilonia, Makar Press, Mariscat Press and Scottish PEN. It announces that ‘pamphlets are for those who seriously profess to be poets and feel a responsibility towards their readership. It is for us to decide and take responsibility rather than to wait for permission from the world of commercial publishing and public subsidy.’ Anthologies of writing have also been influential in disseminating the work of Scottish writers. New Writing Scotland, Scottish Women’s New Writing, And Thus Will I Freely Sing: An Anthology of Gay and Lesbian Writing from Scotland and Original Prints have played a key role in shaping the distinctive features of late twentieth-century Scottish literature. By the beginning of the millennium ‘a new confidence’ began to emerge along with ‘an awareness of the richness of Scottish literature and language [which] was dawning in the school curriculum, in universities, and in bookshops’ (Gi≠ord 2002: 997). Yet the aims and actions of the Scottish Arts Council have not been without their critics. In the wake of Chapman’s early attack on the vagaries of subsidy award decisions, the issue of state-sponsored funding for the arts, and for literature in particular, has continued to be a contentious one towards the end of the twentieth century. An example is the heated debate carried out in the pages of the Glasgow Herald, The Scotsman, and The Sunday Times in 1998 between the advocate of SAC funding, Black Ace Books owner Hunter Steele, and his opponents Alan Taylor of The Scotsman and the literary agent Giles Gordon.

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Steele’s article in The Herald was in part a rebuttal of unfavourable pieces by Taylor and Gordon about what they saw as the miserable state of indigenous publishing. Steele defended both the industry and its assistance by the SAC, whose subsidies represented ‘invaluable money well invested’ (The Herald, 23 May 1998: 17). But in a reply, Taylor reiterated his argument that ‘the SAC was pouring good money after bad’, supporting publishers with ‘grants for books that did not deserve them and which would not be properly edited, designed, distributed, and sold’ (The Herald, 30 May 1998: 14). Giles Gordon weighed in with his view that Scottish publishers used the SAC subsidies as a crutch: I have yet to meet the Scottish writer published by a Scottish publishing house who is entirely, or even partially, enamoured of the experience . . . No Scottish author, or author published by a Scottish publishing house, whether micro or macro or something in between, would want to decamp south if he or she felt that his or her publisher had done as competent a job as a London publisher would have done. (The Herald, 30 May 1998: 14) Publishing is a commercial enterprise and must be run as such if it is to survive, Gordon argued, and it appeared to him that Scottish publishers had very little inclination or ability to market their books in a competitive arena: ‘But why should they make the e≠ort when those nice people at the Scottish Arts Council have all that money to give away?’ (The Herald, 30 May 1998: 14). The SAC decision at the end of 1999 to award Canongate £90,000 to publish a series of translations from Icelandic, Danish and Israeli writers was greeted with similar anger and consternation: Scottish publishing traditionally reflects Little Scotia in all its back-scratching, back-garden glory. There is a close relationship between the industry and those who hold the purse strings of public subsidy. Over clubby lunches, deals are brokered with little reference to the real, commercial world. Ten-volume studies of Sir Walter Scott’s laundry lists are magicked into life for no other reason than some bureaucrat has volunteered to fund such a thing. (Sunday Times, 5 Dec. 1999: 2) Many asked why pay such a financially successful publisher to produce obscure works of fiction by writers no-one has heard of. English publishers were outraged and Scottish publishers such as Derek Rodgers of Argyll Publications whose own application to the SAC to subsidise his series of paperback reprints was rejected, asserted that Canongate’s

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head Jamie Byng was ‘something of a golden boy’, saying that ‘an unelected, unappointed committee like the SAC will always be subject to quirky decisions. I could get angry about it but I’m loath to fight over crumbs’ (Sunday Times, 5 Dec. 1999: 2). The funding to writers, too, has come under scrutiny. Duncan Glen reminds us that up until the 1970s writers assumed they would have to combine a full-time job (mostly teaching) with part-time writing. By the end of the twentieth century, authors and poets in the main ‘aimed not to have to regard their writing as something done after a nine-tofive job’ (Glen 1999: 141). Glen reserved value judgement on this development but others, including Allan Massie, did not, arguing that writers are not owed a living by the state just because they want to write (Scotsman, 15 Feb. 2001: 14). Yet whatever one’s view of subsidy, it is true that the SAC has enabled new writers and new publishers to promote Scottish literary culture in a way impossible before the 1970s. For although it has been argued that the founders of literary imprints in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s were not obsessed by commercial gain, even Duncan Glen, a significant ‘idealistic’ publisher of those decades, admitted that ‘without commercial success no publisher can establish an organization that enables the imprint to compete’ (1999b: 141). The commercial success of an author, nurtured by a small independent imprint, often results in that author being ‘lured’ away by large, London-based conglomerates, with attractive contracts and big promotion budgets. Such a ‘drift south’ has always dogged twentiethcentury Scottish literary publishing, but resources of multinational conglomerates make the rewards seem almost excessive. There are those who argue that authors who receive public money to assist their writing (whether personally through grants or indirectly through a subsidised publisher) should, on obtaining lucrative subsequent contracts, repay their debts to the SAC. Others ask how small publishers can be helped to keep their star authors. Yet there are those who see such author movement as nothing to be ashamed of. In his article entitled, ‘Parochial Publishing is Nothing to Write Home About’, Pat Kane observed that: There’s an acid test that can be applied to the prospect of any new Scottish publisher. Given the choice between signing up to a London-based multinational book corp, or some well-supported, innovative but fledgling Scottish imprint, who would the averagely ambitious Scottish author plump for? (Sunday Herald, 8 Aug. 1999: 8)

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Figure 3.12 Stephanie Wolfe Murray, 1982.

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He argued that London publishers were not attempting to homogenise their Scottish writers, for in order to sell them in the marketplace, publishers ‘have to respect the cultural character’ of what are in fact lucrative commodities. Furthermore, ‘the council’s rhetoric about resisting the lure of London, or New York, is misplaced. It’s enough for public money to provide a classy space for new Scottish creators. Thus nurtured, they can then propagate their well-developed cultural genes through the mediaverse.’ The enormous success of writers such as Alexander McCall Smith and indigenous firms like Canongate has in fact lured English publishers back to Scotland. In 2004 both Hodder Headline and Penguin opened Glasgow o∞ces for their Scottish lists. It has been argued that Scottish literature has finally moved away from the doom, gloom and misery so characteristic of the fiction of the 1980s and 1990s: that of Rankin, Welsh and others. New writers are seemingly setting a more international agenda, a ‘less blighted picture of Scotland’ (Guardian, 10 Jan. 2004: 3). Jamie Byng of Canongate argues against such a blackand-white assessment, however: ‘[W]hat we are seeing now is no di≠erent from what’s happened over the last 10 or 15 years [and] it is something which has not been lost on London-based publishers’ (Scotsman, 6 Jan. 2004: 9). Similarly, Bob McDevitt, head of Hodder Headline Scotland avers: ‘There’s been a lot of interest in things coming out of Scotland. This means that for once London publishers are realising that everything doesn’t happen in London’ (Scotsman, 6 Jan. 2004: 9). What Douglas Gi≠ord described as the ‘bewildering speed and variety’ of the new writing was certainly ‘helped by a range of possible publishing outlets which ranged from the local (Mainstream, Canongate, Macdonald) to London (Cape, Secker, Gollancz) . . . A new breed had arrived which felt utterly confident of writing from Scotland, perhaps about Scotland, but by no means limited at all to Scotland’ (Gi≠ord 1990: 2).

Stephanie Wolfe Murray (1941–) ‘To have been Scottish and a woman and a poet was to have been marginal in three di≠erent ways’ – this is how Dorothy Macmillan summarised the position of female poets during the Scottish Literary Renaissance in the 1920s and 1930s (Porter). Indeed, it was largely male writers – Gibbon, Edwin Muir and others – who emerged and gained public visibility in this period. Towards the end of the century, however, not only the number and literary weight of women writers increased dramatically, but much of the publishing of Scottish literature was also done by female editorial work.

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Stephanie Wolfe Murray – a native of Dorset who was educated in England, and whose initial a∞liation with Scotland was by marriage – was one of the women whose work changed the face of Scottish literary publishing. Wolfe Murray’s work started with the founding of Canongate – arguably the most influential late twentieth-century publishing company in Scotland – in 1973, in the company of her husband Angus Wolfe Murray, and an American novelist Robert Shure. Canongate entered into a relative vacuum: though Scottish publishing had a distinguished history in the nineteenth century, it was generally moribund in the 1970s. Canongate started on a small scale, with an investment of £2,000 each by the founders. The first two books brought out were Shure’s novel The Monk (1973) and The Comic Tales of Edgar Allan Poe (1973), lending credence to Wolfe Murray’s original intention of setting up a publishing house in Scotland rather than a distinctly Scottish company. By 1975 she found herself in the editorial chair. Despite the permanent struggle against the unpredictability of income and an often hostile reception by Scottish and English booksellers, Canongate soon spawned success such as Jimmy Boyle’s Sense of Freedom (1977), Alasdair Gray’s Lanark (1981), as well as Lady Antonia Fraser’s bestselling anthology Scottish Love Poems (1975) which placed the work of Mary, Queen of Scots side by side with the work of Tom Pow, Valerie Gillies and other contemporary Scottish poets. Wolfe Murray also took on what were often considered risky publishing challenges. She published William Lorimer’s Scots translation of the New Testament (1983) – a book doomed to fail according to booksellers, yet which became a bestseller. In 1981, she o≠ered a contract to Alasdair Gray for Lanark on the basis of the excerpts published in the Scottish Internationalist. The contract forced the author to complete the final version of the text – and a seminal if not the most significant fiction of postwar Scottish literature was born. Canongate also launched two series that brought commercial success and lasting contribution to the world of literature: Kelpies, founded by Canongate in 1984 but now run by Floris Books, was a children’s paperback series, largely reprinting out-of-print books by top class writers, including work by Francis Hendry and Mollie Hunter. Normally, Canongate brought out about eight Kelpies a year, and the series gradually included nonScottish titles. The imprint was later sold to Floris Books. The second series was Canongate’s most famous imprint, Canongate Classics, launched in 1987. The project was initiated by the Scottish Arts Council, and inspired by its broad-minded and enterprising literary director Walter Cairns. The SAC sought partners willing to keep good Scottish work in print, thus encouraging and sustaining the teaching of Scottish writing at universities. Of several publishers, it was only Canongate that

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responded to SAC’s initiative. Still, calling the series ‘Canongate’ – rather than ‘Scottish’ – Classics indicated a choice based on editorial taste rather than on canon. The first volume, Willa Muir’s Imagined Corners showed that ‘classics’ was understood in a broad sense: creating classics, as well as republishing undoubted classics and unearthing forgotten classics, was equally on the agenda. The project resulted in a stream of elegant paperback editions under the general editorship of Rory Watson, designed by the artist George Mackie. Forgotten women writers of di≠erent periods and genres were often published, such as Nan Shepherd’s work, placed beside the older Memoirs of a Highland Lady. The series also included many undoubted classics such as Stevenson’s Kidnapped and Catriona. The selection Island Landfalls, a collection about the Pacific culled from Stevenson’s short stories, essays and correspondence, was compiled specifically for Canongate by Jenni Calder. In July 1993, the series hit the fifty-book mark with three new issues, Edwin Muir’s An Autobiography, J. MacDougall Hay’s sombre novel Gillespie, and a new selection of short stories by Iain Crichton Smith. Despite their successes, and their considerable influence on general and niche publishing in Scotland, Canongate continued to experience financial di∞culties, until it was bought over by Jamie Byng and Hugh Andrew in 1994, who with significant injection of capital would lead them to further critical and economic successes. Wolfe Murray’s career in publishing did not end there, though it would become subsumed into other professional endeavours. Since the 1990s, she has worked on behalf of a number of charities, including Scottish European Aid, an organisation focusing on aid work in the Balkans and Bosnia, and found time to support and stimulate the publication of works such as Paul Harris’ Cry Bosnia, as well as other strong writing about the former Yugoslavia aimed at educating and entertaining readers in the Balkans. Zsuzsanna Varga

Scottish writers and publishers have had to adapt to new conditions in order for the country’s literary culture to develop. In order for it not to atrophy, writers and publishers: ‘must not turn from the challenge of multi-cultural, international, media-orientated experience which is the world beyond Scotland’ (Gi≠ord 1990: 4). Such sentiments echo ones expressed over forty years earlier by R. D. Macleod: The average Scotsman does not concern himself as to whether the book he is looking at is published by a Scottish or an English firm. There is no sentiment here, and the modern Scottish publisher

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realizes the fact. The Scottish house will fulfil its best destiny by stretching out in the grand old manner of the great firms of the Scottish past, whose eyes were on the ends of the earth, and whose activities carried the products of Scottish publishing across the world. (1953: 24)

The Gaelic Book Richard A. V. Cox Compared with its English-language counterpart in Scotland, the Scottish Gaelic publishing industry is small; yet it is extremely important from a cultural point of view and has nurtured development in both literary and non-literary writing that is the result of a gradual increased awareness and politicisation of the issues of language and culture. And yet, in cultural terms, the industry’s output has been and, to a large extent remains, a surface activity. Below the surface, there is an untapped, unchallenged, unconnected sector of the population which continues to display a conditioned lack of confidence in the public use of the language, and, in spite of developments in Gaelic publishing between 1880 and 2000, it is probable that a considerable percentage of the current older generation will pass away without benefiting from or – perhaps worse from a future perspective – without making a contribution to the written, as opposed to the oral, tradition. The development of Gaelic publishing over the last century or so has been dependent upon several factors, including the nature of the readership, the political context, internal trends and external influences. Arising out of some, if not all, of these have been a number of catalysts, chiefly in the persons of Ruaraidh Erskine of Mar and Derick Thomson and in the work of the Gaelic Books Council under the directorship of Ian MacDonald. Gaelic was once the language of the king and of other institutions in Scotland, and it remained the language of the Highland nobility even after conversion of the royal court to Scots. By the eighteenth century, however, the old Gaelic order had gone. The introduction of new institutions from the Lowlands brought Scots, later English, and with it status, creating a diglossia in which the higher domains were English speaking and the lower domains Gaelic speaking. In this way, the use of 277

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Gaelic would become more or less restricted to the home environment. In parallel, the church’s relationship with Gaelic has been a complicated one. The more extreme sects of Presbyterianism have been overtly hostile to secular interests and, over generations, this has helped undermine ethnic pride (Thomson 1985: 264). While this negative image is often the dominant public perception, ‘no other public bodies in Scotland have used Gaelic so consistently in the higher domains as the Presbyterian churches. A major by-product of this has been the strengthening of the language and of some (though by no means all) dimensions of the culture’ (Meek 1996: 66). Yet the nature of this Highland diglossia is not static: the influx of non-Gaelic-speaking people to Gaelic-speaking areas, the introduction of English through radio and television and the influence of English through school have all had a deleterious e≠ect on the extent to which Gaelic is able to remain the language of the home (MacLeòid 1976: 13). Nowadays the same may be said of the church whose services frequently alternate between Gaelic and English in order to accommodate nonGaelic-speaking incomers, while Gaelic services in the cities are largely reserved for celebrating special events in the Gaelic social calendar (MacAulay 1992: 17). Conversely, Gaelic-speaking communities which had come together in city environments, as the result of a long process of migration in search of employment, were largely responsible for the development of the Gaelic publishing industry, as well as for the establishment of cultural and intellectual organisations and the initiation of political movements such as land reform (Thomson 1985: 265). On the one hand, then, Gaelic has been, and still is being, severely restricted in use by the nature of its juxtaposition to English. On the other, the language has experienced a self-conscious expansion in a number of comparatively sophisticated domains and registers, for example in education and broadcasting. Nevertheless, in the whole range of the Civil Service, local government, law, commerce and industry, there are virtually no Gaelic links; indeed, Gaelic was withdrawn from the list of Civil Service examination subjects towards the end of the 1950s (Thomson 1979: 17). Between 1950 and 1961, the Survey of the Gaelic Dialects of Scotland interviewed local Gaelic-speaking informants from 207 geographical points across the Highlands, including a whole range of locations along the northern and eastern seaboards of Sutherland and Ross, as far east as Braemar and Blairgowrie, and as far south as Brig o’ Turk. The geographical spread captured by the dialectal survey largely reflects the picture in 1891. In other words, although the number of speakers had

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Figure 3.13 Front sti≠ paper cover and loose binding of John MacCormick’s 1908 Gaelic language novel Gun d’thug I spèis do’n àrmunn (She Gave her Love to the Hero).

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declined, the traditional dialectal range survived into the 1950s. In a matter of a few decades, however, great swathes of the country became devoid of their native Gaelic speakers. Not only was there a reduction in the physical area of the Gaelic-speaking heartland, but the proportion of Gaelic speakers living in Lowland as opposed to Highland areas was growing: by 1991, 40.33 per cent of the Gaelic-speaking population of Scotland lived outwith the Highlands, and today the figure has risen to 44.5 per cent (MacKinnon 2003: 2). In addition, while Gaelic speakers emigrate to the Lowlands, a greater number of non-Gaelic speakers emigrate to the Highlands. Finally, the number of Gaelic speakers continues to decline: the census figures of those who were able to speak, read or write Gaelic decreased from 82,620 in 1971 to 69,510 in 1991 and to 65,674 in 2001. These three factors – the number of Gaelic speakers, the dispersed nature of Gaelic-speaking communities and their dilution by English speakers – have raised continual concerns about the viability of the Gaelic publishing industry and how its market can be defined. Since the time of James VI’s centralist theories entailing the destruction of Gaelic culture and language, o∞cial attitudes to Gaelic have remained largely negative. Indeed, in spite of the obvious successes of some school societies in their use of Gaelic as a language of instruction in the Highlands, the Education (Scotland) Act of 1872 ignored the existence of the language. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, contact with English culture and institutions raised expectations for Gaelic, especially among urban Gaels, and this led to the development of di≠erent writing media and of new publishing sectors. It also led to the build-up over the last century or so of organisations and structures that have endeavoured to maintain a level of support for Gaelic – with some success, indeed: in a recent survey conducted for Bòrd na Gàidhlig, in partnership with the BBC, it is noted that ‘broadly speaking 80 per cent of people in Scotland support Gaelic’ (Scottish Parliament Education Committee Report 2005, para 8). Today, we have witnessed the enactment of the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Bill, but it remains to be seen what its e≠ect will be. Historically, the Gaelic publishing industry has always been hampered by the perceived status of Gaelic and by its uncertain future. Through the perseverance of a small number of dedicated individuals, however, the industry survived its hesitant beginnings. More recently, it has been able to reap the benefits of widening political support for the language, in particular through Gaelic Books Council funding, but also through local council initiatives that support the language, especially in education. However, progress in provision in education has always been

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slow, and, while Scotland as part of the powerful English-language cultural area has always faced high odds in an attempt to preserve its identity, it seems that Gaelic has always faced higher odds (Thomson 1985: 265). In part, this may be the fault of a deferential attitude; for example, concluding his report on Gaelic-speaking children in Highland schools, the convener wrote: A whole new field of study lies in the problems of teaching and learning Gaelic. There is an urgency about this type of study because it is painfully obvious from this report that, however su∞cient the present educational provision may be, it is having little e≠ect on the decline of Gaelic. (Smith 1961: 64) Not only did this avoid the fact that the system was indeed contributing to the decline of the language, through neglect, but it provided it with an alibi. Nevertheless, the situation has moved on considerably over the last few decades, although the lack of homogeneity in the requirement for Gaelic across Scotland has meant that local authorities have developed their own solutions. All this has presented a considerable challenge to the publishing industry, in terms of making adequate provision for potentially di≠erentiated markets. A considerable consequence of the renaissance of Gaelic, of its widening support and of its emergence into a national context, is that the language is removed from its domestic and local domains. This demands an exaggerated level of language development in terms of new vocabulary and new registers, a process that is fraught with di∞culties and sometimes absurd, sometimes ingenious results. For a long time, the chief proponent of this activity was the periodical Gairm, which made a significant contribution in a range of subject-areas from literary criticism to astronomy. The BBC’s Radio nan Gaidheal (the partnational, part-local Gaelic radio station) has also been a major contributor in this regard, especially in political and journalistic fields. Television has also played its part, although perhaps more erratically. In April 2004, Seirbheis nam Meadhanan Gàidhlig (the Gaelic media service) was established to oversee the development of a digital Gaelic television channel; once this comes to pass, the increase in the number of programmes broadcast will inevitably create further demands on the language. In spite of the relatively late development of a Gaelic book culture, the literary tradition was strong – indeed, all the more so as a way of a∞rming ethnic identity in the absence of normalised political organisation (MacInnes 1979; Thomson 1985: 262) – and the period from 1880 to the turn of the century was heir not only to the nineteenth-

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Table 3.1 Diversification in Gaelic Publishing in the Late Nineteenth Century. Category

1840s

1890s

Translated religious works Non-religious literature

40 10

12 25

century growth in readership, but also to the long but steady process of migration from Gaelic-speaking to non-Gaelic-speaking areas, within which context the seeds of Gaelic publishing were sown. Verse and religious writing continued to be published, yet the periodical was far less successful than it had been during the main part of the nineteenth century. The mainly English Celtic Magazine, Inverness, ran from 1875 to 1888 and the Cape Breton-based, first Gaelic newspaper, Mac-Talla, was founded in 1892, running weekly until 1901, and fortnightly until 1904. The real innovations of this period lay in the (small) beginnings of diversification and in the introduction of prose-reading books. Although output was down from the heyday of the mid-nineteenth century (there were fifty-seven publications during the 1890s, compared with seventy during the 1840s), the ratio of religious to non-religious books was changing (Table 3.1) (see MacLeod 1977: 202, 208). A number of these non-religious titles constituted a new genre of prose-reading books, for example, The Celtic Garland (edited by Henry Whyte, Glasgow, 1881), which, though inspired by contemporary ‘Penny Readings’, continued the cèilidh (story) tradition in the new context of Lowland-based Highland Society meetings (MacLeod 1977: 209). During the twentieth century, the publication of collections of poetry and song continued largely unabated. Similarly, interest in folklore remained strong, especially as a result of the six volumes (including one of indexes) of Carmina Gadelica. These were the collections of invocations, prayers and charms made by Alexander Carmichael between 1855 and 1899 and were edited by his daughter, Elizabeth Carmichael (vols 1–2, 1900), his grandson, J. C. Watson (vols 3–4, 1940 and 1941), and Angus Matheson (vols 5–6, 1954 and 1971). The first edition of the first two volumes was published by Norman MacLeod of Edinburgh, otherwise all subsequent volumes and editions were published by Oliver & Boyd (later the Scottish Academic Press). The major publishing innovation of the early part of the twentieth century was the publication of a small number of novels – the genre had not been tried before. John MacCormick’s Dùn-àluinn; no, An t-oighre ’na dhìobarach (‘Dùn-àluinn, or the heir in exile) (Paisley, 1912) mixed love and anti-landlord themes with some murders and scenes of

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Figure 3.14 Printed cover of Modern Gaelic Bards, published by Eeneas Mackay of Stirling in 1908.

goldmines in New Zealand; it was an extension of a short novel, Gu’n d’thug i spéis do’n àrmunn (‘she gave her love to the hero’), that had been published in Stirling four years earlier. Part of Angus Robertson’s An t-ogha mór (‘the big grandson’) (Glasgow, 1913), had also appeared previously, in this instance in the periodical An Sgeulaiche (1909–10). This was a historical novel set between the Highland Risings of 1715 and 1745. While its detailed description was described in the periodical, Guth na Bliadhna, as a ‘luxuriant crop of beautiful verbiage’, the Glasgow Evening News spoke of its ‘almost morbid Meredithian

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avoidance of the obvious in phrase’ (Thomson 1983: 218). James MacLeod’s novel, Cailin Sgiathanach (‘Skye maid’) (Glasgow, 1923) is set in Skye in the second half of the eighteenth century and is often simply an opportunity for its author to express anti-clerical and antilandlord feelings. Yet the Gaelic novel of the early twentieth century remained largely an experiment: this was at least partly because its authors failed, in spite of a potential market, to develop suitable registers for the new medium. Fiction in the form of the short story was more successful. The most prolific writer of the period, John MacCormick, produced four collections of stories and contributed widely to the periodicals of the time. However, although in its broadest sense the short story had had a long history in oral literature, in a more limited sense its current manifestation was a development with roots in the late nineteenth century; and, to a large extent, when not based on oral styles of storytelling, the short story of the early twentieth century su≠ered from the same problems as the early novel: both were bound intimately to the written tradition of the nineteenth century, which was created for expository and didactic purposes but was a dead hand in creative writing (MacInnes 1983). Nevertheless, this was a popular genre and some periodicals, for example, An Sgeulaiche (Dumfries and Glasgow, 1909–11) and An Ròsarnach (Glasgow, 1917; 1918; 1921; 1930) were dedicated exclusively to the task of publishing them. The periodical had begun the twentieth century in strength, especially due to the indefatigable e≠orts of Ruaraidh Erskine (Ruaraidh Arascain is Mhàrr, as he styled himself in Gaelic), who founded, edited and/or contributed to several titles. Chief among these was Guth na Bliadhna (‘the voice of the year’) (Glasgow, 1904–24) which developed an intellectual journalism, particularly in the articles of Angus Henderson – a journalist by profession – and of Erskine himself. Issues raised included land reform and nationalism. While the experiments in the early Gaelic novel and the development of a journalistic prose were the result of attempts at adopting the norms of the external, more pervasive society (Thomson 1986: 9–10), the Gaelic essay at least had roots in the nineteenth century. In the hands of Donald MacKechnie and Donald Lamont, however, the genre had moved a long way from the model of Norman MacLeod (known as Caraid nan Gaidheal or ‘friend of the Gael’). MacKechnie’s work appeared in several periodicals before being published in book form (Am Fear-Ciùil, Glasgow, 1904), while Donald Lamont’s essays, which have been described as the ‘canon of contemporary Gaelic prose’ (Watson 1939: xx), appeared for the most part within the pages of the Gaelic supplement of

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Figure 3.15 Cover of Gaelic journal Gairm no. 191.

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Life and Work. (The Rev. Donald Lamont [Dòmhnall MacLaomainn, 1874–1958] was editor of the Gaelic supplement between 1907 and 1950. A collection of his writings has since been published by Oliver & Boyd [1960] on behalf of the Scottish Gaelic Texts Society). The waning of nineteenth-century influence is similarly detectable in school prose collections, for example, Malcolm MacFarlane’s An Treòraiche (Stirling, 1903) and W. J. Watson’s Rosg Gàidhlig (Glasgow, 1915). From fifty-seven titles published during the 1890s, the yearly average of Gaelic publications rose to eight or nine during the first half of the twentieth century and remained relatively stable until the Second World War, when the industry ceased production practically altogether. By the late 1950s, the annual rate was still only around four or five, although this was to change considerably in the coming years, especially under the influence of Derick Thomson and his publishing activities. Alexander MacLaren & Son of Glasgow were the most important publishers of this period, while Alexander Gardner of Paisley, Eneas Mackay of Stirling and Archibald Sinclair of Glasgow, each of whom had been operating in the previous century, continued to make a contribution. It is also important to mention the stalwart contribution of An Comunn Gàidhealach (the Highland Society). The society published a (normally bilingual) periodical for most of the twentieth century (An Deo-gréine 1905–23, An Gaidheal 1923–67, Sruth 1967–79), and produced a range of other publications, including prose readers, poetry collections and anthologies, as well as the Còisir a’ Mhòid series, the Mod’s collections of songs. Indeed, in spite of the lull as a result of the Second World War, the society’s publications provided a certain consistency in publishing output right up until the late 1950s. For the second half of the twentieth century, the seeds of development and growth had already been sown in the first. In addition to the influence of the long-lasting Gaelic language movement, the Scottish Literary Renaissance was a pivotal stimulus for much of the growth in literary creation and consequently book production in this later period, and the publication of Sorley MacLean’s Dàin do Eimhir in 1943 was an important milestone in this process. In the wake of the culturally unifying e≠ect of this external focus, however, internal tensions within the genre have often raged between old style verse, on the one hand, and new style poetry, on the other (Black 1987). More recently, a contrast can be felt between first and second language-speaker perspectives and themes, and one senses that questions about the adequacy or otherwise of registers abound. In 1952, the Lewis-born poet and academic, Derick Thomson (Ruaraidh MacThòmais), co-founded what was to become a principally

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literary magazine, Gairm; and by the late 1950s, Gairm Publications had began producing a series of titles that frequently reflected Thomson’s literary interests. Thomson also initiated and directed publishing activity in the Departments of Celtic at the University of Aberdeen between 1962 and 1963 and at the University of Glasgow between 1963 and 1991: the output of these imprints was frequently literary and included collections of poetry, and collections of short stories as well as some novels. While the modern short story has a genesis of sorts, or rather an impetus, in the grouping of writers publishing in the mid-1940s in the Portree High School magazine, An Cabairneach, it was Gairm that gave free rein to the development of the medium and what is the dominant literary form in Gaelic today (MacLeod 1987: 334). Thomson’s influence can also be seen in the serialisation of Iain Crichton Smith’s novella Murchadh in Gairm in 1979. In spite of Thomson’s dominance in the Gaelic publishing world, others made a contribution, for example, the Scottish Gaelic Texts Society (published by Oliver & Boyd, later the Scottish Academic Press, Edinburgh), Clò Beag (Glasgow), Clò Chailleann (Aberfeldy), Crùisgean (Bernera, North Uist; later, Skye), Leabhraichean Beaga (Inverness) and An Comunn Gàidhealach. Special mention has to be made of Acair (Stornoway), an imprint established in 1977 as the result of a perceived gap in the education market. Some mainstream publishers, for instance, Canongate, Macdonald Publishers and Birlinn, have also produced the occasional Gaelic title. By the late twentieth century, although the relatively small number of titles blurred the edges somewhat, a range of discernible sectors had arisen within the Gaelic publishing industry. The religious sector remained fairly constant; the general non-literary sector had developed to some extent with historical or quasi-historical titles and a growing range of biographical, autobiographical and reference books; literary fiction grew in considerable strength; but it was in the education and children’s sectors that development was most marked. It is probably true to say that publishers were slow to take advantage of the newfound confidence in Gaelic language use that helped raise demand for more Gaelic in schools, not only as a subject in an English-speaking environment but also in bilingual and monolingual contexts. Certainly, schools found themselves pasting a lot of Gaelic text into Englishlanguage books in the early days before Acair and others began to redress the situation. One of the most significant developments of the period was the announcement in 1968 of a grant to aid Gaelic publishing. The

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provision was for £5,000 annually, in the first instance, to be administered by a specially instituted Gaelic Books Council (Comhairle nan Leabhraichean). The view of its first chairman was that the council could encourage writers into areas where gaps in the spectrum of publishing sectors were widest; as he put it: ‘Feumaidh sinn a dhol fada fada a-mach air crìochan cumhang na sgoil-Ghàidhlig a th’ againn an dràsda ma tha sinn gu bhi beò anns an ath linn’ (‘We have to go far beyond the narrow confines of the Gaelic school we are now in, if we are to survive into the next century’) (MacThòmais 1976: 84). Marion Sinclair’s 1988 study of Gaelic publishing was based upon the results of a questionnaire distributed to seventeen publishers. An overview of the industry notes that there were two main publishers, Acair and Gairm Publications, twenty-two or so small publishers, publishing occasionally, and a handful of English-language companies publishing Gaelic material on a one-o≠ basis. The Stornoway-based company, Acair, was launched in 1977 under the joint ownership of Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, Highland Regional Council, the Highlands and Islands Development Board and An Comunn Gàidhealach. Initially, the company was formed to fill a gap in the education market, but, by 1988, it had accrued over 100 titles. Acair styles itself as a publisher of Gaelic, English and bilingual books, and today has over 300 titles. Categories include children’s Gaelic fiction and non-fiction, and adult books in Gaelic, English, or both, on history, music, poetry, biography, Gaelic grammar and language, and all Highland-related subjects. In 1988, Glasgow-based Gairm Publications was the largest Gaelic publishing house, achieved partly through taking over Alexander MacLaren & Son’s list in 1970, as well as Club Leabhar’s during that decade.6 In spite of the predilection of its director for literary works, the company published in a broad range of categories, from children’s books to fiction to reference, even biology.7 Of the small publishing houses covered in Sinclair’s 1988 survey, Leabhraichean Beaga was established in 1983, when two of its founder, Lisa Storey’s, books were turned down for publication. The company 6

7

Derick Thomson retired from his post as Professor of Celtic at the University of Glasgow in 1991, but maintained a number of interests, including publishing, for several years. It is apparent that the publishing arm of Gairm Publications was being wound down prior to cessation of trading in 2004 (no new publications, as opposed to reprints, were launched after 1997. After fifty years, the all-Gaelic magazine, Gairm, celebrated its 200th and last edition in autumn 2002. Bith-eòlas: a’ chealla, ginntinneachd is mean-fhàs (‘biology: the cell, genetics and evolution’) (1976) by Raghnall MacLeòid and translated by Ruaraidh MacThòmas (Derick Thomson), was one of a number of assays into register development in more or less uncharted subject areas undertaken by Thomson, particularly through the periodical, Gairm.

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concentrates on children’s books, but has also published children’s reference. Crùisgean were established in 1978 for the purpose of producing a current a≠airs newspaper of the same name, but the company later went on to publish books (Sinclair 1988: 24). In spite of their intention to increase the number of its titles, Crùisgean’s output has remained low. The Scottish Academic Press (in a former incarnation, Oliver & Boyd) have published books for the Scottish Gaelic Texts Society since 1972, the most recent title being a new edition of Màiri Mhòr nan Òran’s poems edited by Dòmhnall Meek in 1998. This was, in fact, the first Gaelic-only volume published by the society; formerly all publications were in English, with Gaelic text produced in translation as well as in the original. Finally, the survey covers Macdonald Publishers, who have shown a literary interest in Gaelic, and Comunn Gàidhlig Inbhir Nis (the Gaelic Society of Inverness, established 1871) the publishers of a journal containing some Gaelic articles on a currently roughly two-yearly basis since 1872. The number of small players in Gaelic and Gaelic-related publishing is, in fact, almost legion: of 427 books produced between 1968 and 1999, 197 were published by two companies (Gairm and Acair), ninetynine by six (with totals for the six companies of twenty, twenty, nineteen, sixteen, fourteen and ten each (Comhairle nan Leabhraichean 1999), and 131 titles by a total of sixty-seven companies. Analysis of more recent titles in the Gaelic Books Council’s catalogue shows a di≠erent pattern (Table 3.2).8 The loss of Gairm Publications has halved the number of companies turning out titles at the highest rate; at the same time, more titles are being produced by a middle-order rating; finally, there are a greater number of casual, one-o≠ publishers. A considerable number of publishers included in these figures, however, produce bilingual rather than Gaelic publications – or, frequently, they are English publications with English and Gaelic parallel text. Table 3.3 details publishers from the same 2000–2 sample, listed according to whether they produce Gaelic or bilingual publications. Although the survey period is short, Table 3.3 confirms that the number of publishers producing more than the occasional title in this sector remains small. However, a significantly di≠erent view of the situation is obtained depending on whether or not bilingual titles are taken into account. If they are included, the figures may suggest that publishers of bilingual titles are less committed to the sector. (The four titles by Gairm Publications are all reprints.) From an economic point of view, it 8

All Table figures are drawn from Gaelic Books Council Annual Reports 1988–9 and 1998–9 and catalogues

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Table 3.2 Title Rates per Publishing Company 1968–99, 2000–2. 1968–99 (thirty-one years) No. of titles

Titles as a percentage

No. of companies

Share per company

197 99 131 427

46.14 23.18 30.68 100

2 6 67 75

23.07 3.86 0.46 Totals

2000–2 (three years) No. of titles

Titles as a percentage

No. of companies

Share per company

10 22 43 75

13.34 29.33 57.33 100

1 5 37 43

13.33 5.87 1.55 Totals

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Table 3.3 Publishers of Gaelic and Bilingual Publications, 2000–2. Gaelic Publications

TOTALS

Bilingual Publications

Acair Stòrlann Nàiseanta na Gàidhlig ⫹ Acair Clàr Leabhraichean Beaga Comunn Dràma Ghàidhlig Ghlaschu Secondary Review Group ⫹ Acair City of Edinburgh Council MacLeòid and NicDhùghaill Scottish Bible Society BBC Alba Burns-Gaelic Trust Clò-Chrabhaig Clò-TaC Comunn nan Còisir diehard J. & M. Literary Services Lindsay Publications Stòrlann Nàiseanta na Gàidhlig Taigh nan Teud

10 5

5

Birlinn

4 4 3

4 2 2

Gairm Publications Scotsoun Fèisean nan Gaidheal

2

2

Polygon

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

1

Wildwood Publications

1

TOTALS

42

McGill-Queen’s University Press Highland Regional Council Acair Penguin Books Scottish Bible Society West Port Books Edinburgh University Press Mercat Press Etruscan Books Saint Andrew Press Keltia Association of Scottish Literary Studies 1 National Museum of Man ⫹ National Museums of Canada 1 Ronald Black 1 Glengarry Visitor Centre 1 Lomond Books 1 Dornoch Studio 32 TOTALS

makes sense to increase one’s market by reaching both readers and nonreaders of Gaelic. On the other hand, while there may be advantages to the learner, placing Gaelic in parenthesis within English texts is ultimately limiting in cultural and socio-political terms. In e≠ect, there are two entirely di≠erent markets: the Gaelic and the bilingual. In this regard, it is of considerable concern that the publication rate of Gaelic titles over the 2000–2 period was only fourteen per year, only 6.67 if children’s books are discounted and only 4.33 per year if text books (which are all for children) are also discounted (Table 3.4).

Children’s Children’s series Text books Text-book series Drama Music and song Poetry Bibles Biography Fiction Vocabulary Bibliography Collected writings Courses Essays Miscellaneous Other prose Religion Studies TOTALS

Totals

16

1

1 1

5 2 3 1 2

13

1 1

1 2 1

5 2

13

1

1

7 1 1 2

17 5 4 3 3 3 2 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 42

1 0 0 0 0 6 12 1 0 0 7 0 2 3 0 0 1 0 0 33 14

1

2

1

3 7

11

1

5

4 1

2001

8

2

1

3 1

1

2002

2000

2002

2000

2001

Bilingual publications

Gaelic publications

Table 3.4 Gaelic and Bilingual Publications 2000–2.

Children’s Children’s series Text books Text-book series Drama Music and song Poetry Bibles Biography Fiction Vocabulary Bibliography Collected writings Courses Essays Miscellaneous Other prose Religion Studies TOTALS

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These figures do not compare well with the eighteen titles per year receiving Gaelic Books Council grants between 1968 and 1999; and yet, introducing bilingual titles to the calculations for 2000–2 produces an annual rate of twenty-five – an apparent increase of seven titles per year. (The figure of eighteen per year from 1968 to 1999 includes both Gaelic and bilingual titles.) The discrepancy, then, between these rates of Gaelic books published, calculated with or without taking bilingual titles into account, is of major significance for Gaelic language planners. Some recent developments are worth noting. With the continued expansion of Gaelic-medium education, it soon became clear that a dedicated system for providing and distributing high quality materials for schools was required, and Stòrlann Nàiseanta na Gàidhlig (the National Gaelic Resource Centre) was established in 1999 for this purpose. Funding derives from a number of sources: the Scottish Executive, Bòrd na Gàidhlig, local authorities and the organisation’s own online facility, Gàidhlig Air-loidhne. The Lewis-based company provides a number of services and, through its catalogue and website, now sells pre-school teaching materials, Heinemann’s Storyworlds reading scheme, Heinemann Scottish Maths, children’s novels (8–12 age group), language courses, teenage fiction and non-fiction, as well as a few materials on environmental studies, geography, history and miscellaneous subjects. While Stòrlann Nàiseanta na Gàidhlig is increasing provision for schools, a Gaelic Books Council initiative has recently taken the step of increasing provision for the adult market, specifically in fiction. Several new titles have already appeared under a new imprint, Ùr-sgeul, as the result of the council’s New Gaelic Writing project aimed at attracting new, especially young, writers. Ùr-sgeul is facilitated by the Gaelic Books Council, with funding from the Scottish Arts Council’s National Lottery Writer’s Factory and Bòrd na Gàidhlig, with publishing rights awarded on a competitive-tender basis. The relatively new publisher, Clàr, which has previously produced children’s books, is publishing the first series of titles. Ùr-sgeul is also undertaking a collaborative venture with the Dublin-based company, Cois Life, to publish two of its titles in Irish Gaelic. Ùr-sgeul has received considerable acclaim – for example, Màrtainn Mac an t-Saoir’s Ath-aithne (‘re-aquaintance’) won the Saltire Society’s Book of the Year Award in 2003, and Aonghas Pàdraig Caimbeul’s An Oidhche mus do Sheòl sinn (‘the night before we sailed’) was short-listed for the Society’s Book of the Year Award 2004 – and it has also raised expectations, helping to establish a readership and demand for longer fiction, with potential benefits for writers and publishers alike.

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Other developments include Cànan, a multi-media company publishing books, audios, interactive websites, CD-roms and DVDs, and which produced the support material for Scottish Television’s Gaelic learner’s series, Speaking Our Language in the 1990s. More recently, Gath Publications Ltd was established to publish the literary magazine, Gath – in e≠ect, a successor to Gairm. The most recently-established Gaelic publisher is Clann Tuirc. While there has been considerable development in the range of literary genres, publishing sectors and publishing houses over the last century, the advances made have hardly been adequate to serve a language and culture in the modern era. Nevertheless, this foundation may be su∞cient to build on, although this can only happen as users of the language rid themselves of the shackles that have impeded them for so long. In 1974, Kenneth MacKinnon commented that the generation then being born might be the last for whom Gaelic is a native and community language. He continued: For there is one fact and one fact alone which will secure a future for Gaelic: the resolve, belief or intention of those who speak it that it shall continue to be used for those aspects of life which are fundamental to the community: the home, the church and face-toface dealings with local folk. But such are the pressures in modern life that for any secured future for the language an extension of its use into the public and o∞cial life of the community will have to be undertaken: in the school, the local committee, radio and television, the public meeting, the written and formal business with local o∞cials, on public signs and notices, road signs and on shop fronts. In Wales there has been insistence by Welsh speakers for this to happen – and they are succeeding. In Scotland, Gaelic speakers have felt it impolite to insist on the use of Gaelic – even side by side with English – if English monoglots are present (and today they nearly always are). Gaels may forget or fail to realise just how impolite English monoglots may be to insist upon another speech community shifting to English for their benefit (MacKinnon 1974: 92). Decisions taken here will fundamentally a≠ect the shape of Gaelic publishing and the Gaelic book in years to come.

Section 4

PUBLISHING POLICIES: THE DIVERSITY OF PRINT Overview

he history of the book in Scotland in the twentieth century would not be complete without acknowledgement of the nonliterary texts that were the mainstay of many Scottish publishers’ lists during this period. Scots expertise in cartography, law, medicine, theology, science and education translated into immensely influential and profitable books and journals. Successful series begun in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries supported the profit lines of many eminent firms such as Nelson, Blackie, Collins, E. S. Livingstone and W. Green. The story of what happens to Scots dominance in these areas is outlined in this section. It is a story repeated elsewhere in this volume: the struggle to survive mid-century economic di∞culties, the rise of multinational corporations; the integration of previously familyowned enterprises into larger organisations; and the streamlining and reshaping of the Scottish book trade to fit new models of operation. Over the period, however, significant material was produced by Scotsbased individuals and organisations in a range of social arenas. Key amongst these was works of theological and religious significance. Great was the number of Scots who contributed to the development of theological and international Bible scholarship in the twentieth century via work published in Scotland, as Henry Sefton points out in his contribution. Works were issued not just by theologically-focused and inclined publishers, but also by Scots-based churches; an example issued by the latter was the long-standing and influential house magazine of the Church of Scotland, Life and Work, which began life in 1879, and was unusual in featuring Gaelic material and light fiction in its pages, including work by R. M. Ballantyne and Margaret Oliphant. Among the Scots who would make their mark in the field of theological textual production was William Robertson Smith, whose contributions

T

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in the late nineteenth century to the iconic ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, both as author and editor, influenced its production and reception: his theologically liberal contributions to the volume would inspire a major debate and reshape religious positions within the Free Church of Scotland. While Scots-based publishers such as Collins, who had made their reputations initially with religious texts, would move away from their original focus to more general trade publication work, others such as T. & T. Clark would remain focused on this core market. Still others would end up selling their theological publishing lists as part of restructures and mergers in the 1960s – such was the case with Thomas Nelson & Sons, who in the 1960s would relinquish their bible publishing wing to a US consortium. The US based o≠spring would go on to become the sixth largest publishing company in the world, specialising in particular in theology and bible studies publishing. Educational publishing was another strength of Scots-based publishers such as Nelsons and Chambers, who took advantage of their overseas connections to dominate foreign markets. After the implementation of the Education Acts of 1870 and 1872 in England, Wales and Scotland, opportunities for educational list specialists to supply general text books and study guides increased, though the financial results of such initiatives would not begin to be seen fully until the 1880s. Successive raising of the school leaving age over the first half of the twentieth century, the establishment in 1947 of the principle of free secondary education for all youngsters to the age of 16, and new curricular demands created as a result increased opportunities for Scots publishers to produce new and lucrative lines in set texts, primers and supporting material. Despite successes in these areas, firms such as Nelsons, Blackies and Collins were not immune to changes in need, drops in state funding for educational library purchases, and shifts in international markets. New areas of demand were cultivated by farsighted organisations: thus the rise of academic and electronic journal provision would prove an important source of income in the educational and science fields, with firms such as Edinburgh University Press increasing their presence in this work as the century drew to an end. Science, technical, medical and reference publishing have been well served in Scotland. The publishers Blackie would develop important science book series over the century, cartography would be dominated by the Edinburgh firms John Bartholomew & Sons W. & A. K. Johnston; E. S. Livingstone (merged in 1960 with J. A. Churchill to form Churchill Livingstone) would exploit its close links with the University of Edinburgh’s medical faculty to keep abreast of advances

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in the field and publish important surgical texts; while Collins and Oliver & Boyd would support key texts in biology, geology, ornithology and mathematics. Chambers would prove pre-eminent in the field of dictionary and reference publishing throughout the twentieth century. O∞cial state publication, on the other hand, had a low profile in Scotland until regional and national pressure forced the HMSO (Her Majesty’s Stationery O∞ce, which had the monopoly on state documentation publication) to establish a dedicated, though short-lived, centre in Edinburgh in the late 1980s, which folded after ten years in 1996. Finally, there is the area of children’s literature. Early in the century this genre was dominated by firms such as Blackie & Son, Nelsons and Collins, who developed substantial lists of varied work, ranging from boys and girls adventure tales (at the turn of the century bestselling authors in this genre included G. A. Henty and Bessie Marchant), to short fiction and ‘gift’ and ‘prize’ books. Later, the Dundee-based, family-owned firm D. C. Thomson would emerge as the most successful Scottish-based firm specialising in children’s periodicals and journals: it was rare for a Scottish home to be without a copy of at least one of their publications, whether the annuals the Beano, the Dandy, Oor Wullie or The Broons, or for the older market, the People’s Friend. Of their contemporaries, D. C. Thomson alone would remain under family control through to the end of the century, focusing with great success on owning, publishing and managing a range of periodical and newspaper titles across Britain going beyond their interests in children’s literature. Ultimately, however, as this section demonstrates, D. C. Thomson was unique in surviving the century untouched by global market trends. Its compatriots in the publishing business would follow a general trend towards merger and agglomeration in one of two forms – either as a section of a larger, print-based multinational organisation, or as part of a multi-media organisation with interests across a range of print and visual media (such as the multinational Frenchbased firm Vivendi). By the end of the century, the face of Scottish nonliterary publishing had changed, with multinationals taking over where old family firms had left o≠, and old firm names becoming imprints within larger business structures.

Religious Publishing Henry R. Sefton In 1881 the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland declared that it was no longer ‘safe or advantageous for the Church’ that Professor William Robertson Smith should continue to teach in one of her colleges. This was the culmination of a controversy caused by Smith’s articles on ‘Bible’ and ‘Hebrew Language and Literature’ which he had contributed to the Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1875 and 1881. These took account of recent German biblical criticism and upset many conservatives in his own and other Churches. While he lost his chair at the Aberdeen Free Church College Smith moved to a series of important academic posts at Cambridge University. He published The Old Testament in the Jewish Church in 1881 and The Prophets of Israel in 1882. His last book, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites, was published in Edinburgh in 1889 and sets the Old Testament in the context of other Eastern religions. His influence on biblical and religious studies has been immense and continues to this day as was seen in an international centenary conference in 1994.

William Robertson Smith (1846–94) In the previous section, Andrew Nash stressed the role of William Robertson Nicoll as editor and literary entrepreneur in the career of Scottish writers between 1880 and 1914. Nicoll (1851–1923) also represents the intersection of religious faith and publishing both in his own career and the parallel career of his contemporary William Robertson Smith. Nicoll’s father, Harry Nicoll, was minister of Auchendoir at the time of his son’s birth. This was part of the Presbytery of Alford in Aberdeenshire that also contained Dr Pirie Smith of Keig, father of William Robertson Smith. Robertson Nicoll was born into and brought up in the Calvinist scholarship of the Free Church; his father was a

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Figure 4.1 Title page to Nelson’s Concordance to the Bible, undated.

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scholar but devoted to his pastoral duties. Both fathers possessed large book collections: ‘When the walls of his manse could carry no more Nicoll filled the floor of its largest room with parallel bookcases’ (Drummond: 45). Both sons followed their fathers into the Free Church. William Robertson Nicoll himself held a successful parish in Kelso before he entered publishing on a fulltime basis and moved to England. There he nourished and encouraged the triumvirate of Barrie, Maclaren and Crockett. Maclaren was also a Free Church minister, whose greatest charge was in Liverpool, and a member of its liberal wing like William Robertson Smith. Robertson Nicoll recalls in his biography of ‘Ian Maclaren’ (John Watson) that when the latter went to Aberdeen Free College: Robertson Smith had just left the College, but in Watson’s picturesque phrase ‘the white track behind the vessel was still on the water’. Smith carried on a tutorial class in Hebrew, and when he left Edinburgh Watson and others who had been indebted to his help presented him with an illuminated address expressive of regret at his departure, and gratitude for his services. (48–9) If support for the cause of Robertson Smith was the touchstone for membership of the liberal wing of the Free Church, then S. R. Crockett, another Free Church minister, also belonged to it, completing the identification of this nexus of Scottish writing and publishing with its moderate theology. ‘They all wrote in the first place of life through the windows of the Free Kirk manse; they were all in some degree patronized by William Robertson Nicoll, a Free Churchman’ (Blake 1951: 42). Robertson Nicoll embraced Liberal politics as well as liberal theology: he was on Asquith’s list for ennoblement to the House of Lords to overwhelm Tory opposition to the reform of Parliament. The cause of William Robertson Smith began when he was invited to contribute to the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica by its editor, Spencer Baynes, who also held the presumably undemanding chair of Logic, Metaphysics and English Literature at St Andrews. Volume 3 of the Britannica, published in 1875, contained Robertson Smith’s entry under Bible. The views expressed within it, applying the tools of historical and literary criticism to Scripture, contrary to the nature of dogmatic Calvinism’s faith in the inspiration of the Word of God, were not new for Robertson Smith but this publication gained his iconoclasm a wider readership. The dispute that followed divided the Free Church in three – the partisans, including Robertson Nicoll, Maclaren and Crockett, the fence-sitters, the opponents – and was resolved by Robertson Smith’s suspension from his Aberdeen chair and his eventual move to Cambridge in 1883 to take up the chair of Arabic, the occasion upon which he received his illuminated address. At Cambridge Robertson Smith met and influenced J. G. Frazer; the first volume of The

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Golden Bough is dedicated to Robertson Smith ‘in gratitude and admiration’. His influence was also acknowledged by Durkheim and Freud. Robertson Smith had taken over the editorship of the Britannica in 1881, helping to create, as Jane Potter notes in a later study in this volume, ‘The Scholar’s Encyclopaedia’, a primary work of reference that dominated the market for several decades. A. & C. Black sold some 9,000 sets by the end of the nineteenth century while its US distributor, Charles Scribner, topped that by a factor of five. William Robertson Smith’s views were, therefore, not confined to a few fellow scholars and theologians but seemed to find a wider readership, particularly among the laity, on both sides of the Atlantic. ‘Seemed’ because it was not until a hostile review by A. H. Charteris – see Life and Work below – appeared in the Edinburgh Courant in 1876 that his fellow members of the Free Church paid any attention to the development of his ideas. This may have partly been sparked by the irony of reading criticism of the work of a liberal Free Church academic from a member of the supposedly less theologically dogmatic Church of Scotland. The controversy was initiated, perpetuated and reported in print. William Robertson Smith’s Encyclopaedia entries were attacked in an anonymous pamphlet Infidelity in the Aberdeen Free Church College – less lubricious than it sounded. Robertson Smith responded to the charges against him in a 25,000 word essay in a newspaper – an huge space to devote to it. The debates in the Aberdeen Presbytery and the Free Church Assembly were fully reported in the Scottish press and exposed an even wider public to the concept of critical textual and historical examination of the Bible. William Robertson Smith brought together his various essays on the controversy in The Old Testament in the Jewish Church in 1881. The nature of the Good Book was being argued about in other pamphlets, papers and books, implying the existence of an eager readership for theological dispute. The expulsion of Robertson Smith was the last victory of the die-hard Calvinists within the Free Church. His liberal theology was to triumph over the ‘Auld Lichts’ (except in corners of the Highlands and the Western Isles where, after further schism, the ‘Wee Frees’ survived) but a new threat came from another quarter, the new evangelism. Moody and Sankey had visited Scotland in 1873 and 1881. Their Sacred Songs and Solos became the second highest bestseller for a time (after the Bible). However, British publishers had initially declined to undertake an edition and Moody underwrote it himself. Moody and Sankey were the Northcli≠es of religion, finding a new and relatively unsophisticated (reading) public. This created a greater gap than that between liberal and Calvinist theologians; it created a gap between an intellectual doctrine based on texts and a belief founded on emotion and sentiment. Alistair McCleery

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William Robertson Smith was one of several Scots who contributed to the revised version of the Bible (1881). It was a Scottish minister, George S. Hendry, who started the initiative which led to the production of the New English Bible (1961, 1970). Several Scots contributed to that new translation and also to the Revised English Bible (1989). Probably the most widely read and influential translation of the English Bible by a single translator is that by James Mo≠at (New Testament 1913, Old Testament 1924, Bible 1926, revised 1935). There is no complete translation of the Bible into Scots but W. L. Lorimer’s New Testament in Scots published in Edinburgh in 1985 was an immediate bestseller and after several reprints in hardback was issued in paperback by Penguin Books. George Adam Smith set out to ‘interpret to the present age the messages of the ancient prophets’ but his ‘Modern Criticism and the Preaching of the Old Testament’ published in 1901 was the cause of a near-trial heresy in the General Assembly of the United Free Church. The case was dismissed and he continued to publish extensively on the prophets. His best known work, The Historical Geography of the Holy Land, originally published in 1894 and frequently reprinted, was said to have greatly assisted the British army in that region during the First World War. The New Testament has been well served by its Scottish interpreters. Archibald M. Hunter excelled at mediating the results of scholarship to the student and ordinary reader. His numerous books included several with participial titles: Introducing the New Testament (1945); Introducing New Testament Theology (1957); Interpreting the Parables (1960); Teaching and Preaching the New Testament (1963). An earlier work, Paul and his Predecessors (1940) had a second edition in 1961. Hunter’s contemporary, William Barclay, was an even more prolific writer but his fame rests chiefly on his Daily Bible Readings. Beginning in 1953 with the Acts of the Apostles Barclay eventually covered the whole of the New Testament and only ill-health prevented his covering the Old Testament. Sales ran into millions in English and many other languages including Estonian and Burmese. New editions revised by his son Ronald and others are still in print. William Neil also wrote popular introductions to the Bible but his one-volume Bible commentary (1962) covering all the books of the Old and New Testaments and the Apocrypha in 544 pages is at once both concise and readable. James Denney was a distinguished New Testament scholar but he is remembered mainly as a theologian who wrote the Death of Christ (1902). Hugh Ross Mackintosh was regarded by many as the greatest British theologian of his generation. His fame rests on his The Doctrine

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of the Person of Jesus Christ (1912) and as a teacher of theologians like Donald and John Baillie and Thomas F. Torrance who achieved international reputations. David S. Cairns is remembered as an apologist for the Christian faith and his The Reasonableness of the Christian Faith (1918) arose from his experiences with the YMCA in France during the First World War. T. F. Torrance has written widely on interface between theology and science. James Hastings was the editor of many religious dictionaries and encyclopaedias but he is remembered mainly for the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics in thirteen volumes (1906–26). He also provided many guides for preachers and founded The Expository Times in 1889, a periodical designed to inform about theological literature and to publish sermons for the Sundays of the Christian Year. The massive Dictionary of Scottish Church History and Theology (1993) continues the traditions.

T. & T. Clark Started in 1821 in Edinburgh by Thomas Clark, T. & T. Clark (renamed as such in 1846 when Thomas’ nephew, also Thomas Clark, joined the firm) was one of several Scottish publishing firms founded in the wake of an early nineteenth-century revival in Scottish evangelism. Interest in reaching this potentially large, religiously inclined mass reading audience initially motivated the initiators of firms such as Blackie, Nelson, Collins and T. & T. Clark to produce targeted works in the religious field. But while many of these early innovators later moved into other publishing arenas as the century progressed, T. & T. Clark remained focused on theological publishing as their core business, though later adding legal publishing to their repertoire in the twentieth century. Based first at 32 George Street, in the late 1820s they moved premises to 38 George Street, where they operated until 1985, when they shifted across the road to 59 George Street. The firm’s lists were initially built on a succession of theological series, such as the Biblical Cabinet (1832), the Foreign Theological Library (1846–91) and the AnteNicene Library (1865). In 1880 nephew Thomas Clark’s son John Maurice Clark joined the firm, becoming sole partner on Thomas’ retirement in 1886. His brother Thomas George Clark would join as partner in 1894. Between them they would expand the international range of the firm, forging business links with Scribners in the US, and making contacts with German and Canadian firms. They would also invest in significant religious volume series, including the Dictionary of the Bible (1898–1900), the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (1908–26), and the International Theological Library (1891–).

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Other areas of interest included the lucrative market in religious primers and handbooks, for which they developed such titles as Bible Class Handbooks (1879 onwards), Bible Class Primers (1884 onwards), and a series aimed at a general readership, World’s Epoch Makers (launched in 1899 under the general series editorship of Oliphant Smeaton). As part of their strategy to diversify their general range of publications, the Clarks took on periodical publication and distribution work. In 1885 they became British agents for the US quarterly periodical The Presbyterian Review, but poor UK sales caused them to drop this initiative in 1889. In its place, that year they took over the publishing of the religious journal Expository Times, which ran successfully throughout the twentieth century. In 1909, John Maurice Clark’s health broke down, and he travelled to Ceylon to recuperate. His place as director of the firm was taken over by his son Thomas Clark, who became a partner in 1911. In 1918 Thomas George Clark, who had played an important role in steering the firm into the twentieth century, also began to withdraw from active direction. By 1923 Thomas Clark was sole director, a position he occupied until 1930, when other members of the Clark family joined the firm. Throughout this turbulent period of war and changes in company direction, T. & T. Clark continued to issue profitable series, many of them instigated and edited by James Hastings. These included the Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels (2 vols, 1906 and 1908), The Great Texts of the Bible (20 vols and index, 1910–19), and the Dictionary of the Apostolic Church (2 vols, 1915, 1918). Regional, national and international sales for new and back-listed works and journals ensured the firm remained comfortably profitable throughout the inter-war years. For example, the Dictionary of the Bible alone sold over 90,000 copies between its launch in 1898 and 1920. Income generated by sales of the Expository Times yielded a steady surplus of over £2,000 per annum until the late 1940s; a subsequent membership and advertising drive saw profits rise ten-fold by 1972, when income generated topped £17,662 (Dempster 1992: 245). From the 1950s onwards, greater dependency on overseas markets saw the firm shift focus in its areas of religious concentration. Thus in 1965, it took on the publication of the Catholic magazine Concilium, and began publishing works by Roman Catholic authors, a marked move into more interdenominational religious publishing areas. Statistics for the period demonstrated the need for adaptation to global market interests: by the mid-1970s, exports accounted for almost 75 per cent of T. & T. Clark book sales, almost 49 per cent of subscriptions to the Expository Times, and 62 per cent of the firm’s turnover (Dempster 1992: 255). The firm remained in family hands until 1973, when it was felt appropriate to merge with the Edinburgh map-publishers Bartholomew & Son. In 1980 the Bartholomew Group was bought over by Reader’s Digest, and then in 1985

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sold to News International. During the last quarter of the twentieth century, the firm has had to deal with being part of a multinational organisation environment, focused on international markets yet allowed some freedom to develop regionally focused lists. Among its diversifications has been its emerging law publishing department, which has produced popular legal works such as You and Your Rights in Scotland, which generated over £50,000 in profit in the mid-1980s, and has developed or acquired related titles such as the Scottish Law Directory, and in 1990 the monthly Times Law Reports, an indexed collection of legal case reports culled from the pages of The Times newspaper. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, T. & T. Clark, like so many of its Scottish contemporaries, had moved from being family-owned, regionally centred and thematically engaged in religious publishing activity, to engaging in a global marketplace with relevant pressures and demands for wider publishing concerns. In the late 1980s, T. & T. Clark was subject to a management buyout led by Geoffrey Green. He in turn sold the firm in 2000 to Continuum International, where it acts as its main religious imprint. David Finkelstein

Sermons are not only heard. They are also read and many are still published. James S. Stewart was inspired by the preaching of James Denney and became possibly the most outstanding modern Scottish preacher. He published several volumes of sermons in his lifetime (1937, 1940, 1968, 1972) and a posthumous volume was issued in 1996, the centenary of his birth. James A. Whyte’s sermon preached soon after the Lockerbie air disaster of 1988 was published by the local authority and reprinted many times to meet a world-wide demand. It is also included in a collection entitled Laughter and Tears (1993). The Preachers Lectureship established by Frank Warrack of Carnwath in 1920 enabled e≠ective preachers to reflect on the sermon in a series of lectures which were subsequently published. Various o∞cial service books have been issued by the Churches from 1923, the latest being Common Order of the Church of Scotland (1994). The Church Hymnary was published in 1898 followed by Revised Church Hymnary in 1927 and the third edition in 1973. These were issued on behalf of various Presbyterian churches, notably the Church of Scotland. Common Ground – A Song Book for All the Churches was published in 1998. The convenor of the editorial committee was John Bell who contributed eight songs and a further sixteen in collaboration with Graham Maule. Bell and Maule collaborated in Songs of the Incarnation (1984) and in other collections under the auspices of the Iona Community. Wild Goose Publications, the publishing arm of the Iona Community,

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issued The Whole Earth Shall Cry Glory (1985) a collection of prayers written by George F. Macleod, the founder of the community, for services in Iona Abbey. The collection is suitable for private devotions and is enhanced by superb colour photographs. John Baillie intended his Diary of Private Prayer (1936) for personal use and described it as unsuitable for the liturgical use of public worship. It is the best known of all his works and has sold 125,000 copies in Britain alone and has been translated into several other languages. J. W. Stevenson’s God in My Unbelief (1960) is a kind of spiritual autobiography using fictitious names but based on his experiences as a parish minister. Ministerial autobiographies have often had odd titles. Charles L. Warr called his The Glimmering Landscape (1960). His colleague and successor at St Giles’, Edinburgh, Henry C. Whitley, chose Laughter in Heaven (1962). Nevile Davidson of Glasgow Cathedral had Beginnings but No Ending (1978). G. A. F. Knight, a wandering Scot, asked What Next? (1980). W. G. Young reflected on being a Presbyterian Bishop (1995). Biographies have also had strange titles. God’s February by Elizabeth Templeton (1991) is a life of Archie Craig. In Love and Laughter by Nansie Blackie (1995) is a portrait of Robert Mackie. Ron Ferguson has written two outstanding biographies with straightforward titles: Geo≠ the life of Geo≠rey M. Shaw (1979) and George Macleod (1990). Both have been reprinted. Michael T. R. B. Turnbull’s biography of Cardinal Gordon Joseph Gray (1994) is remarkable not only for his subject, the first resident cardinal in Scotland since the Reformation but also because it was published by Saint Andrew Press, the publishing house of the Church of Scotland. W. P. Livingstone was a prolific writer of missionary biographies. These included Mary Slessor (1915), Robert Laws (1921) and Alexander Hetherwick (1931). There are several versions of his work on Mary Slessor who has continued to attract biographers like James Buchan in The Expendable Mary Slessor (1980). Andrew C. Ross, himself a former missionary, has written about John Philip (1986). The full title indicates a new approach: John Philip: Missions, Race and Politics in South Africa 1775–1851. Examples of fictional biography are provided by A. J. Cronin: The Keys of the Kingdom (1942 and frequently reprinted); George Mackay Brown: Magnus (1973); and Robin Jenkins: The Awakening of George Darroch (1985). Donald Campbell’s play The Jesuit (1976) portrays the trial and execution of John Ogilvie, canonised in 1976. Various books have discussed the relationship of the Church to the community. Francis Lyall’s Of Presbyters and Kings (1980) is concerned with Church and State in the law of Scotland as is Andrew

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Heron’s Kirk by Devine Right (1985). William Storrar o≠ers a Christian vision in his Scottish Identity (1990). Graham Houston deals with Christian ethics in the computer age in Virtual Morality (1998). Richard Holloway wishes to keep religion out of ethics in his Godless Morality (1999). But perhaps the most radical of all are George Macleod’s We shall Rebuild (1944, revised 1962) and his Only One Way Left (1956). Religious periodicals declined in importance during the twentieth century but Life and Work, the editorially independent magazine of the Church of Scotland, founded in 1879 and merged with the Record of the United Free Church in 1929, maintained a healthy monthly circulation throughout the century. ‘Records’ were issued on a more occasional basis by the Church Service Society (founded in 1865) and the Scottish Church History Society (founded in 1922). The Scottish Journal of Theology was established in 1948 and Theology in Scotland in 1994.

Life and Work Life and Work, the house magazine of the Church of Scotland, has had only fourteen editors since its inception in 1879. Its founding editor, Archibald Hamilton Charteris, then Professor of Biblical Criticism at Edinburgh University, wished to create a vehicle to unite the Church and make all its elements aware of all its activities. The pain of the Disruption of 1843 was still felt in some places and Life and Work was to heal the wounds as well as provide a counter influence against any continuing tendency to schism. One of the instruments to underline this inclusiveness was the issue of targeted supplements including one for the Women’s Guild (that Charteris had also founded) and one in Gaelic. The latter has survived from 1880 to the present day. A Forces Supplement was also started in mid-1880. Loose sheets of advertising matter were included for products such as cod liver oil and Yorkshire Relish and for passages to the USA and to India on the Anchor Line. Life and Work was an innovation for the Church of Scotland in which publications had hitherto remained rooted at parish level or, in the case of the pre-existing Missionary Record, consisted of dull recitations of Church business. (It absorbed Missionary Record in 1900.) Charteris had worked steadfastly through the Kirk’s Committee on Christian Life and Work in pursuit of his goal of a more appealing magazine; yet it was only with reluctance, and with a certain Calvinist pessimism, that the General Assembly granted authority in 1878 for the committee to ‘publish such a magazine if they should find it practicable’. His fellow members of the committee also failed to share fully in his enthusiasm for the new venture and at one

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meeting he could not attend because of a broken arm, they tried to throw out his plans. In response, Charteris took personal responsibility for the establishment of the magazine and raised £3,000 to indemnify the Kirk against any possible losses. He need not have bothered. Before the first issue appeared in January 1879, 25,000 advance subscriptions had been taken; Charteris in his first editorial gave a figure of 35,000 as necessary to sustain it; and by the end of its first year 76,000 copies of each issue were being sold through congregations across Scotland. By 1885 circulation was 100,000. It cost 1d and for that purchasers received sixteen pages of relatively small type across two columns, with a pink cover and illustrations in black and white. It was published by David Douglas and printed by R. & R. Clark. Charteris further wrote in his editorial: It may seem that we aim at far more than a penny magazine can do; but we believe that if only we are welcomed and supported, our e≠ort may be the means of doing much good. The Christian church has probably never yet made full use of the mighty powers of the Press; certainly the Church of Scotland never has. The Press has made a revolution in every family in the land; it is, for good or ill, teaching every responsible member of the community every day. But the Christian church is only beginning to see what could be done with its help. Although the magazine contained a sermon in each issue, it also included over the first year a serialisation of R. M. Ballantyne’s Philosopher Jack: A Tale of the Southern Seas, published in book form that very same year (1879). This was the first of seven serials Ballantyne wrote for Life and Work; it was followed by Mrs Oliphant’s Wallyford. In other words, Life and Work provided a variety of reading material for subscribers and their households; it was not dry, dogmatic or parochial. However, it was nationalist (lower case). It is di∞cult for anyone who has not read these English popular periodicals from a purely Scottish point of view to understand either how unintelligible they are, and how unsuitable for wide circulation on this side of the Tweed, or how necessary it is that we in Scotland should have a distinctively Scottish magazine Charteris wrote in the first paragraph of the first Life and Work. In the early 1890s, the magazine provided a strong political voice when Gladstone’s Liberals proposed the disestablishment of the Church of Scotland. Life and Work ignored the William Robertson Smith case in the Free Church (see study above) but did open its pages on occasion to the more

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ecumenical members of both the Free Church and the United Presbyterian. When the pendulum swung from division to reunification in 1929 as the Church of Scotland merged with the United Free Church of Scotland, Life and Work absorbed the Record, the latter’s magazine, and took on the subtitle The Record of the Church of Scotland. In R. D. Kernohan’s words, ‘The Record was a polished and skilful production, more topical and in the late 1920s more journalistic than Life and Work, and much less literary’ (Kernohan: 117). By October 1931, Life and Work contained sixty-four pages, including twenty-one of advertising, within bu≠-coloured cover pages, and, thanks to its e∞cient distribution system through congregations, army chaplains, and other church organisations, it had a circulation of 270,000 copies – including some sent to overseas missions in Africa, India and China. W. P. Livingstone, editor 1929–34, was the first layman to take charge of the magazine; he had been editor of the Daily Gleaner in Jamaica. R. D. Kernohan, editor 1972–91, was only the second layman in the post; he kept the magazine conservative (lower case) at a time when the Kirk became more radical in opposition to Thatcherite governance of Scotland. This may have provided a stability consistent with Charteris’ original goal of creating a sense of community within the Kirk but may also have lost the sense of the Kirk’s centrality within Scotland. Alistair McCleery

The books described in this chapter are all Scottish but a high proportion were not published in Scotland due to the drift south of longestablished publishing firms. From the 1890s T. & T. Clark became the most significant Scottish publishers of Scottish academic theology with their International Theological Library and their International Critical Commentaries, a position which they retained through most of the twentieth century. Like many others they too are now part of Londonbased groups. On the other hand some new religious publishers were established in Scotland during the twentieth century. Probably the most successful has been the Saint Andrew Press. Founded in 1954 the Press had a spectacular success with William Barclay’s Daily Study Bible which has sold millions world-wide. The Banner of Truth Trust moved to Edinburgh in 1973. The Handsel Press was established in 1975 and Rutherford House in 1983. Religious publishing has not been confined to religious publishing houses. John Donald is primarily a historical publisher but several of its titles are concerned with the relationship of the Church and the State. The volume of essays edited by Norman Macdougall on Church Politics

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and Society (1983) is a case in point. Canongate have published onevolume editions of the separate books of the King James version of the Bible and caused some controversy when non-Christians were invited to provide some of the prefaces.

Educational, Academic and Legal Publishing Sarah Pedersen By making education compulsory for children between the ages of 5 and 13, the 1870 Education and 1872 (Scotland) Education Acts established the beginnings of a modern education system in Britain – and o≠ered increased opportunity for educational publishers. The 1872 Act established a non-sectarian system of public schooling under the control of popularly elected school boards and subject to the Scotch Education Department, based in Whitehall in London. As Knox points out, in Glasgow, prior to the 1872 Act, only 60 per cent of children ever attended school but by 1910–11 Scotland had more children aged between 5 and 14 attending school than any other European country apart from France (Knox n.d.). However, such education was elementary only – the Acts made no provision for secondary education. Neither was the elementary education o≠ered by such schools free. For another eighteen years after 1872 all but the poorest children paid a few pennies a week for their education. It was also possible to leave school earlier than the age of 13 if you could obtain a certificate of proficiency in the three Rs (Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic). It was not until the Act of 1883 that the leaving age was raised to 14 (although children were allowed to attend ‘half-time’ from the age of 10) and not until 1889 and 1890 that further Acts made funds available to enable school boards to abolish fees for elementary education. Did this influx of children into elementary schools stimulate demand for teaching materials? The simple answer is yes, this did happen. However, Eliot warns against an assumption that there was an immediate impact on the profits of educational publishers. He points out that publishers of educational books initially over-emphasised the likely increase in demand generated by the 1870 and 1872 Education Acts. In many areas, elementary school provision was already well established 311

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and the Acts did not introduce many more children into the schools (Eliot 1994). Altick suggests that, in England, the 1870 Act did not significantly hasten the spread of literacy, merely ensured that the rate at which literacy had already increased between 1851 and 1871 was maintained. He describes the main role of the Act as a mopping-up operation by which the very poorest children were taught to read (Altick 1957). In addition, in those areas where schools were not already provided, building works took some time to complete. So demand for new educational titles was not as high as was anticipated in the immediate aftermath of the Education Acts. Eliot suggests that there was in fact some minor over-production of educational titles at the beginning of the decade followed by a slump in the middle years before a surge as the impact of the Acts really took hold (Eliot 1994). It was from this time onwards that the education legislation stimulated a tremendous demand for teaching materials, in particular basic reading books. No attempt was made by the government to impose a uniform curriculum on the new board schools, although they were required to meet certain basic standards. It was left to the publishers, which included Scottish publishers such as Blackie & Son, William Collins, Thomas Nelson & Sons, and W. & R. Chambers, to provide suitable materials and to individual boards to select appropriately. This left an opening for publishers of text books to compete with each other on everything from price to the ability of a book to be economically used in more than one lesson. Teachers would also be keen to select books which would deliver satisfactory achievement of the 3Rs since in the early years of compulsory education they were operating under a ‘payment by results’ system which meant that the salaries of teachers were linked to the successes of their pupils. One Scottish publisher particularly successful in the provision of reading books was Thomas Nelson & Sons. Its Royal Readers and later the Royal School series sold in vast quantities throughout the British Empire. The company was careful to keep in touch with trends in education, corresponding with educationalists and maintaining contact with school boards in order to identify particular needs. Between 1878 and 1881, educational books represented 25 per cent of the total output of the company and yielded 88 per cent of the total profit – 55 per cent of which was provided by the six books in the Royal Readers series (McCleery 1991). Nelson’s elementary school catalogue was one of the largest and most comprehensive in the country. They introduced the first school atlases and the company is credited with the introduction into these of the lines of latitude and longitude. The reading books were followed by other series, such as The Highroads of History in 1907 and

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The Highroads of Literature and Highroads of Geography in 1911. Such titles benefited from a special attention given to illustrations and contained coloured reproductions, for example of paintings from the national galleries. Nelson’s profits were poured into growing the company. Having established a London o∞ce by 1844 and being the first British publisher to establish a branch in the United States, opening a New York o∞ce in 1854, by 1915 further o∞ces had been established in Leeds, Manchester, Dublin, Paris, Leipzeg, Toronto and Bombay. Trading relations were also established in Australia and South Africa. When a fire devastated the already-extended Hope Park printing works in 1878, causing damage estimated at between £100,000 and £200,000 (only some of which was covered by insurance), a new production works was swiftly built at Parkside near Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh. The new works benefited from investment in the latest technology and were spread over one storey, giving good lighting and ventilation throughout the building. As well as printing for sales in the UK and the Empire, the Parkside works also manufactured books for the American Thomas Nelson & Sons, which remained a branch until 1903 when it became a New York corporation wholly owned by the parent British company. Until the death of Thomas Nelson II in 1892 educational, religious and prize books were the staple products of the firm. When he died, leaving an estate of over £1m, a form of trusteeship operated until the two sons of his brother William, who had died in 1887, were old enough to take over the business. It was at this time that Nelsons launched itself into more general publishing whilst still continuing its educational publishing as an important part of the business. In 1915 Nelsons became a limited company and family members were joined on the board by John Buchan, who had been associated with the firm as author, editor and literary adviser since 1906. Under his guidance the firm survived the traumatic years of the First World War, which included the loss of foreign markets, a reduction in manpower and the death of Thomas Nelson III at the Battle of Arras in 1917. Another major Scottish force in educational and reference publishing was W. & R. Chambers of Edinburgh. While its strength lay in reference publishing its Radiant Way and Radiant Reading series could be found in schools all over the UK and the rest of the world, from Australia to India. In Glasgow, publishers Blackie & Son and William Collins also flourished due to the high demand for teaching materials. Having been established in the early 1800s as both a printer and a publishing house, Blackie concentrated on religious, subscription and reference publishing until the introduction of compulsory education.

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From that time, however, the company moved into educational publishing, including the Century Infant Readers series, basic English and Latin grammars, mathematical primers and, from 1881, a whole series of children’s stories designed as school prizes and published as ‘reward books’. Educational publishing was certainly very profitable. Walter Blackie was rich enough to commission Charles Rennie Mackintosh, who designed bindings for the company, to design the family home, Hill House at Helensburgh. This period also saw a growth in publishing for the university market. The quality of Scottish higher education by the middle decades of the nineteenth century is generally accepted as being poor. This was mainly due to the fact that there were no university entrance examinations and therefore children as young as 14 or 15 could enter one of the five Scottish universities. The Universities (Scotland) Act of 1889 remodelled the constitution of the universities and introduced a new administrative body – the Scottish Universities Committee of the Privy Council – in order to secure greater uniformity in government. An executive commission was appointed with powers which included the regulation of the course of study for any degree; the introduction of examinations for entrance to a university or a particular degree course; and the admission of women to instruction and graduation. In 1892 all Scottish universities were permitted to admit women. The number of students in higher education in Scotland grew from 4,400 in 1830 to 6,000 in 1900 and 10,000 by 1938. The reform of the older universities and establishment of newer ones throughout Britain during the later nineteenth century introduced new subjects to higher education, all of which needed new text books to support the teaching. Modern history, languages and literature and the sciences became established parts of university curricula. Publishing opportunities were not only restricted to text books. The nineteenth century had seen the foundation of many academic journals, mostly by scholarly societies which were either regional or specialist in nature. For example, the Royal Society of Edinburgh published The Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh from 1785 and its Proceedings from 1832. A large proportion of the print runs of such journals would be distributed for free, either to members of the society as part of their subscription, or by exchange with other societies. Sales for profit were limited, but the latter half of the nineteenth century saw growing sales to university libraries, and learned journals became established as steady income generators for their publishers. Changes were also occurring in professional education, and specialist publishers developed to meet a need for professional information. In

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1875, William Green, a former Court of Session o∞cer, set up business as a law bookseller near the Court of Session in the Old Town of Edinburgh. However, it was his 20-year-old son, Charles, who moved the firm into legal publishing when he was forced to abandon his medical studies and take over the business after his father’s death in 1885. Greens might more accurately be described as ‘professional’ publishers since the company also produced medical, accounting, veterinary and agriculture works, including the Encyclopaedia of Accounting and the Encyclopaedia of Agriculture, but the focus of its publishing endeavours was the law. Greens published such standard legal reference works as the Encyclopaedia of Scots Law, the Scots Digest and the Scots Style Book. Throughout the company’s career, it has necessarily had a close relationship with Scottish higher education institutions. In 1889 the law faculties of the Scottish universities were considering the production of a law journal and in response Greens o≠ered to establish the quarterly Juridical Review as the ‘Law Journal of the Scottish Universities’. In 1893 the Scots Law Times, a weekly legal newspaper, started production and soon established itself as the authoritative source of law reporting within Scotland. In 1906 Greens took over the business of Bell & Bradfute, another Edinburgh-based firm which had been established as early as 1734 and which published texts such as Hume’s Commentaries and Morison’s Dictionary of Decisions. Greens became a limited company in 1913 and so was able to continue under the control of its directors on the death of Charles Green in 1920 at the age of 54. At the end of the First World War, the Scottish Education Act of 1918 was intended to involve a complete re-organisation of the whole fabric of the Scottish educational system outside the universities. The 1918 Act provided for the school-leaving age to be raised to 15 on a date to be fixed. However, the di∞cult economic conditions which followed during the 1920s and 1930s meant that such plans had to be postponed indefinitely while cuts in expenditure were urgently sought. The 1918 Act also substituted the county for the parish as the local unit of administration. New education authorities were elected expressly for the administration of education and such a system lasted until the Local Government (Scotland) Act of 1929 transferred power in local educational a≠airs to the county councils. Educational standards were rising and almost total adult literacy had now been achieved. Even during the years of depression, however, educational publishers still had to react to changes in government policy regarding schools. At Nelsons, John Buchan brought Sir Henry Newbolt, with whom he had worked at the Ministry of Information

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during the war, into the company to act as editorial adviser in the educational field. New series were initiated, such as the Nelson School Classics. In part, this was in response to Newbolt’s own 1921 report on the teaching of English in schools in England and Wales. In 1922 Nelsons produced The Teaching of English series, which eventually ran to around 200 titles. In a similar way, Chambers produced the No Lumber educational series in response to a call in the Hadow Report of 1931 to rid the curriculum of useless ‘lumber’. While the school board system had put the emphasis on financial prudence, leading to many text books being closely printed on poor quality paper, as the economic situation improved during the 1930s, text-book quality began to improve markedly. As the economy improved, a new date was set in 1936 for the raising of the leaving age to 15 – September 1939. Obviously, with the outbreak of the Second World War this plan was quickly shelved and education in Scotland, and indeed most of the rest of Europe, su≠ered great disruption until 1945. Publishers’ profits were, of course, damaged by the national emergency and related paper rationing, but in addition many found themselves physically on the front line – not only on the battlefield but also in their o∞ces. Blackie and Collins had their London o∞ces bombed by the Luftwa≠e during the Blitz although both firms still had its headquarters in Glasgow. Blackies actually used part of their Bishopbriggs works for the manufacture of 25-pound shells for the Ministry of Supply and also produced aircraft radiators. Once peace had been declared, however, the public’s attention turned once more to planning for the future. The Butler Education Act of 1944 repeated many of the provisions of the 1918 Act, but went further. The school-leaving age was to be raised to 15 as soon as possible and then, when the Secretary of State deemed it advisable, to 16. The first part of the measure came into force on 1 March 1947. In addition, and for the first time, secondary education became free for all pupils and secondary modern schools were created. Post-1945 education became far more vocational in slant, although there was still no prescription for any text books other than the texts required for certain examinations. There was a reaction against the idea that studying certain subjects, such as Greek or Latin, was necessary as essential training for the mind and, as universities started to drop Latin as an admission requirement, emphasis on the classics was reduced in favour of more ‘relevant’ subjects. This was reinforced in 1963 by the Brunton Report, From School to Further Education, which had a strongly vocational bias. The Curriculum Development movement came to the fore in the late 1950s. This started with the work of the Physical Science Study

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Committee in the US and in the UK was manifest in the Nu∞eld Science Programme and the School Mathematics Project. There was a concern that children were turning against mathematics and science in school because of the way in which these subjects were taught. Curriculum development put emphasis on ‘learning by discovery’ and the teaching of science became a process of enquiry where ‘learning’ replaced ‘being taught’. As Becher and Young point out, such a change in educational methodologies obviously impacted on educational publishers, particularly as far as the commissioning of text books was concerned (Becher). A wide range of materials now needed to be produced and it was unlikely that an individual author would have the necessary skill-set. Instead, publishers had to learn to work with teams, usually of experienced teachers. Basic issues of design and presentation had to be settled early on in the process of development and publishers were expected to produce not only text books but materials such as slides and sound recordings, which had previously been the preserve of the specialist supplier. Curriculum developers also insisted that materials were trialled in schools and possibly revised before publication. Publishers such as Chambers, who published the Nu∞eld Mathematics Project for the Nu∞eld Foundation, or Blackie, who published the Modern Mathematics for Schools series by the Scottish Mathematics Group jointly with Chambers, had to learn to work within these new parameters. In the latter half of the 1960s a second phase of organised curriculum change was introduced. While the emphasis in the first phase had been on subjects such as mathematics and science, the second phase focused on the notion of compensatory education. The Plowden and Newsom Reports had suggested that equality of educational opportunity was not enough. Underprivileged children needed to be given more help. This led to the creation of mixed-ability groupings in classrooms, with cooperation rather than competition stressed. The old teaching methods based on one teacher using a set of text books with a whole class of students were replaced. Now classes could contain separate groups or even individual students working at di≠erent rates through a range of activities. There was a new emphasis on independent study, projects and discussions. As Becher and Young point out, in such a situation classroom materials attained a position of central importance as essential resources and o≠ered new opportunities for publishers. However, curriculum change was a mixed blessing for publishers. In 1975 the Bullock Report described a situation where schools had moved away from a reliance on basic course books, which could be printed in large quantities and so were comparatively cheap. Schools now needed to purchase a greater variety of books to support individual and group work and

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Figure 4.2 George Davie, The Democratic Intellect, Edinburgh University Press 1961.

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these new books tended to be more expensive since individual print runs were lower. As the recession of the 1980s began to impact on school budgets, declining book purchasing by schools became a growing problem for many educational publishers. This was also a period of expansion in higher education and concomitant changes in academic publishing throughout the Western world. From 1950 there was a great increase in scientific activity, partially in response to the Cold War. New subjects appeared at universities, such as space research and nuclear physics, and there was a tremendous growth in the number of scholarly journals on such subjects. As Cook points out, active scholars could no longer read all the relevant papers in their field and so journals came into being that published reviews for whole topics (Cook). The numbers of students in fulltime courses at Scottish institutions of higher and further education grew to 31,000 by the early 1960s (Scotland II: 176). Edinburgh University Press published their first titles in 1948 although the decision to establish a publishing imprint for the university was actually taken by the Senatus during the war years.

Edinburgh University Press In 1942, just before El Alamein, the Senate of Edinburgh University, at the urging of Professors William Calder and Sydney Newman, resolved to establish a publishing imprint for the university. According to the resolution, the press’s: primary object would be the publication of commercially unremunerative research work, performed by members of the University and others. Part of the cost of such publication would be recovered from the issue of text books and other scholarly literature commanding a ready market. Examples elsewhere have shown that the presence in a University of a wisely conducted Press stimulates intellectual activity, canalises its results, and more than pays its cost in the reputation and influence it brings to the University. (Turnbull 1973: 26) Implementation of the proposal was delayed until after the Second World War. In 1948 Edinburgh University Press (EUP) published its first three titles: R. A. R. Gresson’s Essentials of General Cytology; Renart: Le lai de l’ombre, edited by John Orr; and D. E. Rutherford’s Substitutional Analysis. These works illustrate the scholarly yet unexciting outcome of the worthy but pedestrian objectives that the Senate had set the press in its 1942 resolution. Georges Poulet’s Etudes sur le temps humain (1949), however, was awarded the Prix Sainte-Beuve and proved to be a seminal work in critical theory.

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Three factors coincided to raise the general standards of the press and to increase its impact on Scotland and the scholarly community. Firstly, Professor William Croft Dickinson exercised his influence and skills in the press committee to establish EUP as an important outlet for Scottish historical scholarship, laying the foundations for a much fuller understanding of the nation’s history and contributing to the debate about its political status in a revival of the Enlightenment commitment to national rediscovery. Perhaps the title that best embodied that spirit was G. E. Davie’s The Democratic Intellect (1961). Secondly, the expansion of higher education in the 1960s produced a parallel increase in the work of EUP: the number of new publications increased from fifteen in 1966 to twenty-four in 1971. Within such an optimistic climate, EUP undertook the long-term development of key scholarly series such as Primates: Comparative Anatomy and Taxonomy (1953–70), Flora of Turkey and the East Aegean Islands (1965–2001), and Machine Intelligence (1968–72). The final and most important factor was the appointment in 1952 of Archie Turnbull as press secretary. Though only 29 years old, he brought a professionalism and an enthusiasm that had hitherto been lacking. EUP’s titles tended to be either of Scottish interest or by Scottish academics but were not exclusively so. When Archie Turnbull took over in 1952, EUP had published about twelve books; by the time he had retired in 1987 they had produced about 400 and the annual output had risen to forty titles. The design of EUP books was an outstanding feature. Berthold Wolpe [the celebrated typographer] used to come to my stand in the Frankfurt Bookfair. He was very, very small and he used to wear a bowler hat as he walked around. And then I said to him one day, ‘Why do you come round my stand?’ and he said, ‘Because I like your books.’ (McCleery 2005: 36–7) The jacket designs of the EUP output, directed by Turnbull and designed by George Mackie, reflected the neo-classicism of the Scottish Enlightenment while their typography embodied a clarity and austerity of approach. The major competition to EUP came from Aberdeen University Press (AUP) in the 1980s. AUP moved from a primarily printing enterprise to one undertaking original academic publishing when it was bought by Robert Maxwell’s Pergamon Press group in 1978. Maxwell had a positive vision of AUP as a Scottish educational and academic imprint that would rival EUP. The ambition was too great and the promises too grandiose. Maxwell split o≠ the publishing side of AUP from its printing activities in 1989 and invested £500,000 to enable them to build a reputation and publishing programme to eclipse EUP. Works, such as the four-volume History of

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Scottish Literature, an edition of Neil Gunn’s essays, or the Concise Scots Dictionary, that previously would have come to EUP, now began to appear from Aberdeen. However, the crash of the Maxwell Communications Corporation on the founder’s death also brought down AUP. AUP went into liquidation in 1992 with debts of over £1m. Under Martin Spencer, who succeeded Turnbull in 1987, EUP took over the Polygon imprint in 1988 and as a result for a time also published the New Edinburgh Review as well as a striking list of new Scottish fiction. (EUP sold on Polygon, including the ‘No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency’ titles of Alexander McCall Smith, a professor of law at Edinburgh University, to Birlinn in 2002 in an attempt to focus upon its core business of academic books and journals). After Spencer’s untimely death in 1990, the university decided to change the status of the press from that of a department to a wholly owned subsidiary in 1992 and to a limited company in 1994. These moves were made to impose greater financial discipline upon EUP and to enhance its commercial awareness. The executive chairman was David Martin, former managing director of Basil Blackwell, and the publisher was Vivian Bone. (In 2004 EUP changed status once more to that of a charity.) In taking a strategic decision to add further scholarly journals and to focus the book publishing on a handful of core subjects in the humanities and social sciences – including Islamic Studies and linguistics – the press reversed its commercial fortunes and came into profit. International markets constitute up to half of EUP’s business and co-publication agreements with a number of university presses, particularly in the USA, contribute to their expanding revenues. Alistair McCleery

The 1960s and 1970s saw a growth in Scottish intellectual life and national debate, particularly around the subject of devolution and Scottish independence. Academic publishing, in particular, responded to such debate with the establishment of several small presses such as the Scottish Academic Press in 1969. In 1968 the Edinburgh University Student Publications Board was set up to take responsibility for student publications and by 1975 had an annual turnover of nearly £60,000. As well as publishing a weekly tabloid newspaper, Student, it also published titles such as Red Paper on Scotland, a collection of essays on various aspects of the current debate on Scottish politics, culture and finance including contributions by Gordon Brown, the future Prime Minister. In addition to dealing with curriculum and methodological change at home, many academic and educational publishers were also dealing

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with global markets. Some had been involved in overseas sales since the early days. As early as 1887 Nelsons produced a reader in the Nyanja language of the then Nyasaland. By the 1950s the company had published a wide range of books in languages such as Kiswahili, Yoruba, Ewe, Twi and Ga. In post-war Britain, educational books had become very important to Nelson’s success and it nurtured its overseas markets for text books. The old links with the British Empire became new links with Commonwealth countries, especially with East and West Africa and the West Indies. In 1961 and 1963 o∞ces were opened in Lagos and Nairobi. Specialist school books were produced, for example Indian histories, demonstrating the company’s determination to hold onto such markets in the teeth of competition, not just from British publishers but also from American and home-grown publishers. In 1962 Thomas Nelson & Sons merged into the Thomson Organisation in an e≠ort to sustain its educational publishing interests on a global scale. The new management separated the editorial and printing operations and the printing and binding division of the company, based in Edinburgh, was sold in 1968. In 1969 the American company was sold and in 1983 the colophon showing Thomas Nelson’s shop in Edinburgh was dropped from the imprint. In 2000 Thomas Nelson merged with Stanley Thornes to form Nelson Thornes, part of the Wolters Kluwer group (McCleery 2001b). Such a history is not unusual amongst Scottish educational publishers. Over the course of the later twentieth century Scottish firms have increasingly become subjects of mergers and conglomerate activity and many have moved their core businesses to London or even further afield. The move to the South was often initially in response to their own success and the perception that it was best to compete in international markets from a base in London. Blackies, Nelsons and Collins became established in London while, at first, retaining Scottish ownership. The trend from family-run businesses to shareholder-funded plcs became marked during the 1970s with the emergence of conglomerate enterprises as the dominant force in the industry. Successful Scottish firms inevitably attracted the attention of larger international companies o≠ering increased sources of finance and access to new markets. On merger, however, part or all of the operations of a company might be moved south to England. In the same year that Nelsons was taken over by the Thomson Organisation, another Edinburgh educational publisher – Oliver & Boyd – was acquired by the Financial Times. The publishing part of the company was later acquired by Longmans, itself part of the Pearson Group, but continued to publish under their own imprint in Edinburgh until 1989 when their educa-

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tional list was removed to Longman’s head o∞ce in Essex. This was the beginning of the end for Oliver & Boyd, who had ceased trading by 1990, partly because their profit levels were not reaching targets set by Pearson Longman. Blackies retained its Glasgow base but moved editorial and distribution functions to England. The company ceased publishing in 1991 when the school titles were acquired by Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd. One company that does remain at least partially based in Glasgow is HarperCollins. Although most of the company’s editorial team and management are now based in London and New York, the cartographic and reference editorial department remains in Scotland. Collins was founded in 1819 and remained under family control for 162 years. It became the largest independent publishing house in Britain whilst under the leadership of a succession of William Collinses. When the company was floated on the stock market in December 1949, it was oversubscribed four times within a few minutes.

William Collins & Sons The House of Collins was one of the two Glasgow publishers with Blackie that achieved international prominence by the end of the nineteenth century. At the end of the twentieth, it had all but severed its Scottish connections but in the intervening period became the largest Scottish publisher. The original William Collins (1789–1853) was a devoutly religious weaver who began publishing with the sermons of Thomas Chalmers (1780–1847) in 1819. Until the 1860s Collins remained a local business as much concerned with stationery and printing as publishing. William Collins II (1817–95) maintained the stern Presbyterian demeanour of the company’s publishing output but began to diversify into commercial stationery (ledgers, ready reckoners and account books) and diaries. The Education Acts stimulated the demand for text books and Collins became the publisher of the Scottish School Book Association. By 1875, the firm’s catalogue was dominated by educational titles numbering almost 1,000 and exports to Canada, Australia and the United States accounted for one-third of sales. The award of the letters patent to Collins in 1862 made them one of the four exclusive (and only Scottish) publishers of the King James version of the Bible which further strengthened its religious list. Collins had always been printers as well as publishers and almost until the end of the twentieth century book manufacture remained a significant element of the firm’s business. Collins Clear-Type Press was established in 1892 by William Collins III (1846–1906) and used its own exclusive

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typeface (Fontana). On his father’s death, William III assumed the chairmanship and immediately began to transform the firm’s structure. He was a rather racy character with an eye for literature and encouraged the development of popular and in particular children’s fiction. With authors like Andrew Lang and Katharine Tynan, Collins quickly began to dominate publishing for children with full-colour ‘reward books’. William III also conceived Collins Pocket Classics, an out-of-copyright adult literature series launched in 1903 which sold in total over 25 million copies by 1953. The installation of a modern rotary press enabled the cost-e≠ective production of the series at a uniform price of 1s. Other publishers doubted the viability of such cheap editions but soon Dent (Everyman’s Library), Oxford University Press (World’s Classics) and Nelson (Shilling Classics) followed Collins’ lead. William III’s idea was influential in shaping Allen Lane’s Penguin Books thirty years later. Following William III’s tragic death from falling down a lift shaft, his nephew William IV (1873–1945) assumed control with his brother Godfrey (1875–1936). William concentrated on printing, exports and stationery and Godfrey on publishing. Godfrey lacked his uncle’s editorial verve but was a shrewd businessman and continued the expansion of the list into popular adult fiction and cheap editions. He pioneered coloured jackets and advertising. He became a Liberal MP (ultimately Secretary of State for Scotland) and this prompted the opening of a London o∞ce which progressively became the focus of the firm’s literary and popular output, while a new headquarters in Cathedral Street in Glasgow concentrated on stationery (increasingly dominated by diaries) and printing. The next member of the Collins dynasty, William Alexander Roy (1900–76), (William V, but known universally as ‘Billy’) was the most remarkable publisher of his generation. He joined the firm in 1925 with his brother Ian, (responsible for printing) and oversaw a great editorial flowering. Reputed never to read, he nevertheless nurtured authors as diverse as Agatha Christie and Boris Pasternak. He championed literature in translation and serious non-fiction, including the famous New Naturalist series launched in 1945. In 1949 he floated the company with a public share issue. His career saw a series of bestsellers through the 1950s and 1960s and many company acquisitions, including Harvill Press and Geo≠rey Bles and the bookseller Hatchards. The Fontana Paperbacks launched in 1955 became the model for mass-market paperback publishing. On Billy’s death, Collins was the largest independent British publishing house with annual sales of almost £50m. Almost immediately, boardroom disputes and an inability to meet economic challenges meant that his successor W. Jan Collins (1930–) saw the firm’s leading position unravel. By 1979, although turnover had increased, the company experienced its first

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loss due to ill-advised acquisitions and the costs of modernising the printing plant. In 1981, Rupert Murdoch’s News International launched a takeover bid, which although initially unsuccessful, gave him board representation which ultimately allowed him to acquire the company in 1989, although the last active member of the Collins family, Mark, Jan’s younger brother, had left the company in 1983. Today, merged with Murdoch’s book publishing interests, the company operates as HarperCollins, which although the second largest British publisher, is emphatically Englishbased, with only relatively small dictionary and map publishing remaining in Glasgow. The name Collins and the Fontana colophon survive in the diary and o∞ce stationery business sold by News International in 1995 to Debden who still operates from Glasgow. Iain Stevenson

Whilst remaining an essentially Glasgow-based printing and publishing company, Collins had established a London o∞ce before the Second World War and, as Eric de Bellaigue explains (2004), by the 1960s the publishing in Glasgow encompassed bread-and-butter products such as school books, dictionaries, bibles and children’s books while the London o∞ces undertook the more glamorous trade publishing. Financial di≠erences between the two sides of the company grew during the 1960s and early 1970s as publishing experienced sustained growth but the printing side of the company encountered problems. The 1970s were challenging for most British publishing companies, but for Collins the problems were exacerbated by its exposure in manufacturing. In 1974 Collins purchased the World Publishing Company from the Times Mirror Group with the intention that their bible, reference and children’s publishing would complement Collin’s existing activities in the United States. In addition, it was hoped that the Bishopbriggs manufacturing division would benefit from print orders from the US. However, by 1980 the company had been forced to dispose of the World Publishing Group and also make 600 redundancies and job savings, mostly in the UK and largely in manufacturing. The company began to attract the attention of potential purchasers, the most interested being Robert Maxwell’s British Printing Corporation (BPC) and Rupert Murdoch’s News International. In 1989 the company was taken over by News International for £403m and merged with the jointly-owned American publisher Harper & Row to become HarperCollins with its headquarters based in New York. By the 1990s the Glasgow base retained only some warehousing and reference publishing, in particular cartographic publishing after a merger with Edinburgh-based Bartholomew.

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Robert Maxwell may not have been successful in his plans for Collins, but he did manage to take over Aberdeen University Press in 1978 with the aim of creating a Scottish academic imprint. Until this time, the press was a printing rather than a publishing concern and had no formal relationship with the university, although informal links were made by a number of university figures on its board of directors. In 1970 AUP was taken over by the British Bank of Commerce, and in 1978 it became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Maxwell’s Pergamon Press and was reborn as an academic publisher specialising in Scottish literature, history and politics. In 1989 the printing and publishing divisions were separated, with the printing division becoming part of Maxwell’s British Printing and Communications Corporation while the publishers remained part of Pergamon, itself part of the Maxwell Communications Corporation. Shortly after Maxwell’s death by drowning in November 1991, his publishing empire, including AUP, collapsed. Of course it was not only educational and academic publishers who were a≠ected by the internationalisation of commerce during the second half of the twentieth century. The legal publishers W. Green & Son Ltd became a subsidiary of the English law publishing firm Sweet & Maxwell Ltd in 1956. In turn, Sweet & Maxwell became part of Associated Book Publishers Ltd in 1964, who were then acquired by the Thomson Corporation in 1987. Before 1987, as the volume published to celebrate Sweet & Maxwell’s bicentenary in 1999 points out, Greens was managed wholly independently of its English owner. Warehousing, accounts and subscription records were maintained separately and Scottish customers of Greens probably had little notion of the connection. The reason for this can be found in the distinctive Scottish legal system which required Scottish publications. In 1960, the Scottish Universities Law Institute was established to promote publication on Scottish law after the doldrums into which it had fallen by mid-century. Much of the new legal literature which was produced as a result was published by Greens. In addition, the 1960s saw an expansion of undergraduate law degrees as the number of universities within Scotland itself increased. Such changes required the publication of more text books aimed at this younger, less experienced group. Greens was provided with substantial competition for the first time by the entrance of Butterworths to the field of Scottish legal publishing in 1984. Founded in England in 1818, Butterworth’s presence in Scotland began when the company reached an agreement with the Law Society of Scotland to co-publish the Stair Memorial Encyclopaedia, a 25-volume work covering the law of Scotland. Butterworths is now a sister company of LexisNexis in the United States and part of the legal division of Reed

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Elsevier. Both publishers have made substantial investments in electronic publishing and many of their products, particularly reference and information provision, are now delivered to their subscribers electronically. The later years of the twentieth century provided a series of challenges for academic and educational publishers. Demographic decline in Scotland meant falling school rolls, and the 1980s in particular were a testing time for educational publishers as school budgets were squeezed throughout the UK – we have already seen that it was at the end of the 1980s that both Oliver & Boyd and Blackies ceased trading. Report after report from organisations such as the Educational Publishers Council, the National Book League and the Book Trust found that schools were spending less on book provision. The introduction of local management of schools, with individual schools gaining more responsibility for their own budgets, could also impact negatively on book purchase. Spending on books was now merely one part of ‘non-teaching’ costs and had to be weighed against costs such as stationery, ancillary help and the maintenance of school grounds. Exports of school books, which accounted for as much as 40 per cent of all sales during the 1970s, was also hit by the strength of sterling, the growth of local publishing in developing countries, cutbacks in overseas aid and the introduction, in 1988, of the National Curriculum. The National Curriculum also a≠ected publishers’ sales in England and Wales since it prescribed the content of what should be taught at all levels and, as a consequence, the market became even more competitive. In Scotland the 5–14 curriculum is not prescribed by statute. Responsibility for the management and delivery of the curriculum belongs to education authorities and head teachers, or in the case of independent schools, the boards of governors and head teachers. However, broad guidance is produced by the Scottish Executive Education Department (SEED) and Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS). In higher education, research libraries’ buying power had also been hit by budget cuts. During the 1980s UK university library funding dropped by 32 per cent and polytechnic book provision by 56 per cent (Croom). The ‘serials crises’ – whereby the numbers of journals published grew, journals’ prices rose, but library budgets were cut – became a major debating point. University libraries cut their purchase of monographs in order to sustain journal provision. Student numbers were also static until the end of the decade and, with the erosion of their grants, students were spending less on text-book purchases. There were, in addition, growing threats to text-book publishers through second-hand sales and the growing use of the photocopier.

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The student population began to grow again at the end of the 1980s as the connection was made at governmental level between a welleducated workforce and long-term economic growth. In 1992 the distinction between universities and polytechnics was removed and in 1998 the Labour government set a target for 2010 of 50 per cent of young people to be participating in higher education. In fact, Scotland had already achieved this figure by 2000, despite its demographic decline. Growing numbers of mature students (over the age of 21) were attending higher education institutions, which attracted them through more flexible modes of study such as part-time, block-release and distance-learning. However, more students did not necessarily translate into more text-book purchases. Again, library cuts and student debt impacted on text-book sales, but additional factors have included the fragmentation of the market – the level of choice o≠ered to students, particularly in their later years at university has meant that the numbers studying individual subjects might still be low – and the speed of the expansion. Important areas of growth in the 1990s included the new (post-1992) universities, which were starting with underresourced libraries, and vocational subjects, where publishers are still struggling to catch up. As far as the serials crises is concerned, the rise of the electronic journal in the 1990s was at first perceived as a solution since it was hoped that electronic-only journals would be cheaper to produce and would therefore lead to a drop in journal prices. However, by the beginning of the twenty-first century the situation had not changed materially, mainly because many journals were now being published in dual formats – print and electronic. The introduction of the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) in the UK during the 1990s, whereby the published research output of individual university departments was assessed and access to funding council grants limited to the higher achieving departments, also impacted on academic publishing. Since text books were not highly rated by RAE panels, it was sometimes di∞cult for publishers to persuade academics to write them. On the other hand, journal publishers were inundated by submissions from academics eager to publish before the latest cut-o≠ point for the RAE census. A new Labour government was elected to power in 1997 with the promise that its priorities would be ‘Education, Education, Education’. A massive increase in spending on books in schools followed to support its new National Literacy Strategy and the National Year of Reading. In total, schools in the UK received grants amounting to £140m between January 1998 and July 1999. According to The Bookseller publication,

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Book Publishing in Britain, sales to primary schools increased from £77m in 1997 to £90m in 1998. Publishers of reading schemes and children’s books did well because the money was focused on lifting reading attainment and reading for pleasure. However, industry observers suggested that other educational publishers su≠ered in comparison and, in particular, sales to secondary schools remained flat. How possible is it any more to talk of a specifically Scottish educational or academic industry? As we have seen, many of the larger players in the field had merged or been purchased by multinational conglomerates by the end of the twentieth century and their headquarters are no longer based in Scotland. At the same time, this is a sector which is very susceptible to change, either imposed by central government or because of changing educational theory. Changes in the National Curriculum, research funding or teaching methodologies all impact on the profits of educational and academic publishers, both positively and negatively. However, because Scotland retains a distinctively di≠erent legal and educational system there are still opportunities for smaller Scottish publishers in these sectors. Since devolution in 1999, new legislation dealing with education is a matter for the Scottish Parliament and, as we have seen, Scotland has its own curriculum for schools independent of the English National Curriculum. Niche publishers such as Barrington Stoke, started in 1997 to publish fiction and resources for reluctant, dyslexic and under-confident readers, or Leckie & Leckie, publishers of past papers and study guides for Scottish secondary school examinations, have been able to establish themselves. At the same time, the growth in Scottish intellectual life, debate and culture in the last decades of the twentieth century has enabled successful academic publishers such as Edinburgh University Press and Birlinn to thrive.

Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishing Iain Stevenson Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishing (usually abbreviated to ‘STM’) is regarded in modern publishing as a distinct category of products comprising largely monographs but also learned scientific journals with di≠erent market and readership characteristics from other classes of publication. They are typically hardbound, printed in short runs and comparatively expensive; they may often have multiple authorship. Their subjects tend to be narrow and specialist but they are exhaustive and written with authority by acknowledged experts, often from the cutting edge of research. In the main, academic and research libraries will purchase such books as part of large bulk orders. With the increasing professionalisation and specialisation of science and in particular medicine, they tend to be written in a language and style often inaccessible to the layman. Today, STM publishing is a multi-million dollar international business and indeed the world’s largest publisher (Reed Elsevier) is in the main a STM publisher. The concept of STM as a specialist and separate publishing discipline is relatively recent and in Scotland as elsewhere for much of the period it was a mainstream publishing field. Scotland, with a strong scientific and medical infrastructure for a nation of its size and a remarkable heritage in innovation and discovery – including Joseph Lister’s antiseptic surgery, James Clerk Maxwell’s electromagnetic waves, Joseph Black’s pioneering work in chemistry and physics, James Hutton’s uniformitarian concept of geological process and William Thompson, Lord Kelvin’s laying of the Atlantic cable to name but a few – was a theoretical and practical world leader in science. Although Scotland today plays only a tiny role in STM publishing, until recently and certainly in the period covered by this volume, the diversity and range of its STM publications reflected its 330

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active and innovative scientific outlook. This section reviews some of the key developments in the STM book-publishing arena in Scotland. Learned and scientific journals are covered elsewhere in this book but are of course intimately linked by publishers, authors, and editors to STM books.

Scientific publishing The idea of a ‘scientific’ publisher in the modern sense was unknown in the nineteenth century. Many publishers, both English and Scots, included scientific works in their general lists but they were directed to general educated readers who wished to understand scientific discovery and discussion. The idea of a ‘professional scientist’ had not yet emerged. Perhaps the greatest publisher of science of the nineteenth century was John Murray who, although the founder was Scottish, was by this period emphatically London-based. Murrays is best remembered for its epoch-making issue of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859, arguably the most important scientific book ever published, but its scientific output, both in books and journals, was remarkably wide and varied, including the works of Scottish scientists like explorer David Livingstone and zoologist J. Arthur Thomson. While Murrays is probably the publisher of choice for most Scottish scientists because of their long-established relationship with the major learned societies and the British Association for the Advancement of Science, nineteenth-century Scottish-based publishers did not neglect science. Geology and natural history were two areas that were particularly strong. The Edinburgh publisher W. P. Nimmo (later Nimmo, Hay & Mitchell), whose main speciality was reward books and religious tracts, published fine editions of the geological writings of the selftaught stonemason and scientist, Hugh Miller, whose Old Red Sandstone had gone through at least twenty editions by 1900. Miller’s geological essays Edinburgh and its Neighbourhood collected by his widow Lydia in 1862 proved almost as popular and had achieved eight editions by 1883. Nimmo also published editions of the natural history writings of the zoological clergyman J. G. Wood and lavishly illustrated botanical works like Alfred Bennett’s Flora of the Alps (1897). Perhaps the most prolific and eminent Scottish scientist active in the first half of the period covered by this volume was the polymath geologist Sir Archibald Geikie (1835–1924). He was both director general of the Geological Survey and Murchison Professor of Geology at Edinburgh and during his long career he published a large number of monographs, memoirs (in this sense detailed geological descriptions of

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small areas covered by geological survey maps), text books, treatises and a volume of autobiography. He wrote widely on glaciations and volcanic processes and his seminal two-volume study Ancient Volcanoes of Great Britain appeared in 1897. His best-known popular work was Scenery of Scotland first published in 1865 but with many subsequent reprints and new editions. Geikie enjoyed a wide international audience and his main publisher was Macmillan & Company of London whose extensive network of overseas branches ensured his wide distribution. The Geological Survey of Scotland in Glasgow published his geological memoirs, and he occasionally resorted to home-based publishers, especially for rather more eclectic works. His Birds of Shakespeare published by MacLehose of Glasgow in 1916 is a charming work of literary ornithology. The emergence of world-class scientific publishing in Scotland came from an unexpected quarter. The Glasgow publishers Blackie, founded in 1809, had occasionally published scientific titles in its general literature list, but it was most closely associated with school-level educational books, finely printed ‘reward’ and ‘toy’ books and particularly juvenile story and picture books (Blackie 1959). From 1920, however, Blackie began to publish major works in particularly mathematics and engineering and built up what was probably the most distinguished list of high-level scientific titles of any British publisher. The original impetus had come from the scientific interests of Walter G. Blackie (1816–1906) who was active in the development of scientific institutions in the West of Scotland like the Royal Technical College (later to become the University of Strathclyde), but the driving force behind the expansion of research-driven science publishing was Frederick F. P. Bisacre (1885–1954). Bisacre, who had married W. G. Blackie’s eldest grand-daughter Jean, became a director in 1919 and for over thirty years presided over Blackie’s ‘scientific department’. He had trained as a mechanical engineer at Cambridge and before his marriage had practised as an electrical engineer. During the First World War he had been engaged on weapons research for the Royal Navy. Bisacre was well known in the world of science and he attracted to Blackie not only leading British authors but also prominent scientific writers from round the world. He sponsored major translations of the works of European scientists like The Absolute Di≠erential Calculus (1929: later editions to 1950) by distinguished Italian mathematician Tullio Levi-Civita (1873–1941) and the groud-breaking Atomic Physics (1944) by German Nobel physics laureate Max Born (1882–1970).

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Born, who had worked with Einstein and Heisenberg, was one of the twentieth century’s leading theoretical physicists and was instrumental in the development of quantum theory. As a Jewish refugee from Nazism he became Tait Professor at Edinburgh and advised Bisacre on advances in European physics and mathematics. Bisacre himself continued to research and publish actively on his own account in mathematics, physics and optics. He even wrote an admired text book Applied Calculus (1922, second edition 1944) which Blackie published. The scientific list he developed covered a wide spectrum but focused on his own physical science interests, particularly chromatography, microscopy and engineering applications of physics. When he assumed the role of managing director in the 1930s and later that of chairman he was less able to write and research but he continued directly to supervise Blackie’s scientific output until ill-health forced him to retire in 1951. His younger son David (1919–) had already entered the firm (he later was to become publishing director at Frederick Warne), but the direction of scientific publishing passed to his elder son G. H. (Harry) Bisacre (1916–) who had lectured in engineering at Manchester University and under whose direction the applied direction of the list strengthened. The Blackie scientific tradition survived the firm’s demise as an independent publisher. While the famous children’s colour books and educational titles were distributed around the imprints of Thomson International who acquired Blackie, and Blackie’s identity had mostly disappeared by 1991, Thomson recognised the value and reputation of that name in the scientific realm. Blackie Academic and Professional was established as a distinct division of Thomson’s scientific imprint Chapman & Hall. Based in Bishopbriggs, and under the energetic leadership of Graeme Macintosh and a strong editorial team, the imprint produced an impressive flow of titles in fields as diverse as biology and public relations management. Particularly in the early 1990s, Blackie pioneered emerging fields like food science and technology, information and communication technology, biotechnology and cosmetology. True to the Bisacre tradition, mathematics and engineering figured strongly and several of the key texts from the independent era were refurbished in new editions. Sadly, following Chapman & Hall’s disposal to the Dutch conglomerate Wolters Kluwer, who were only interested in the journals programme, the Blackie imprint was abruptly terminated, the Bishopbriggs o∞ce closed and an experienced and creative editorial team dispersed. The final Blackie Academic and Professional titles were published in 1998.

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Medical publishing The leading Scottish medical publisher was E. & S. Livingstone. Established in Edinburgh in the 1860s, Livingstone began as a general literary publisher. Its earliest lists comprised editions of Scott and it was among the first British publishers of Mark Twain. However during the twentieth century Livingstone began to publish more and more in medical books for student and practitioner use. Close links were forged with the great medical schools of Edinburgh and Glasgow and the Royal Colleges based there, and many authors were local. The Edinburgh tradition of medical illustration inspired its publication of spectacular colour handbooks of anatomy of which Johnson Symington’s 1887 Topographical Anatomy of the Child, a large folio volume with fourteen chromolithographed plates, was an early example. Surgery and psychiatry dominated the early lists, but the proximity of authors and students in specialist colleges later encouraged the development of sizable lists in dentistry and veterinary medicine. Less predictable was a growing list in herbal pharmacology that proved pioneering in a little-known field. Livingstone also produced cheap and cheerful manuals for nurses and first aid workers and were early users of spiral binding for ease of reference. The peculiar fondness of medical practitioners for books of reminiscence and anecdote was catered for and the imprint produced a couple of important works of medical history, including a multi-volume survey of naval medicine from 1200 to 1700. Perhaps its most important general publication was the monumental six-volume study by the eminent surgeon Henry Hamilton Bailey (1894–1961) Surgery of Modern Warfare, published in 1944. By the 1950s, Livingstone had become one of the three leading specialist medical publishers in the UK with J. & A. Churchill of London and John Wright of Bristol. Its list was internationally respected and its authors included the world’s leading medical authorities. In 1960 S. Pearson & Son acquired the business, and when it also absorbed Churchill, the two companies were brought together, although the editorial o∞ces initially remained separate. When Pearson took over the venerable house of Longman in 1968, the two imprints were formally merged and in 1971 Churchill Livingstone became the medical division of the Longman Group with its editorial and production base in Edinburgh, latterly in a fine Georgian house at the top of Leith Walk. Key Longman medical titles like Gray’s Anatomy and the Medical Directory were transferred and under the direction of Robert Duncan and later Andrew Stevenson, Churchill Livingstone grew to become one

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of the world’s largest medical publishers outside the United States, with a wide list of text books, monographs and research journals. An interesting link with Livingstone’s early publishing was a specialism in colour atlases of medical and surgical procedures and conditions. During the 1990s Pearson realigned its business and a decline in the medical market (which had grown the fastest of all STM areas in the previous decade) encouraged it to dispose of its medical publishing to Harcourt Brace in 1997. In turn, Harcourt was sold to Reed Elsevier in 2001 and Churchill Livingstone became an imprint of Elsevier. Several other Scottish publishers have published medical books, although generally as part of a more general academic publishing lists. MacLehose of Glasgow, often operating as the University of Glasgow Press, frequently published surgical texts and monographs during the first half of the twentieth century. Oliver & Boyd also published a number of well-known monographs of which J. Batty Tuke’s Insanity of Over-Exertion of the Brain of 1894 was an example. To compete with Churchill Livingstone’s phenomenal growth in the 1980s, the Oxford publisher, Blackwell Scientific, established an editorial base in the city. This proved successful and not only produced a number of medical books but also increasingly became the production centre for Blackwell’s medical journals, including electronic ones.

Science for Everyman: The New Naturalist series One of the most interesting and important scientific publishing ventures made by a Scottish publisher was the New Naturalist series launched by Collins in 1945. Conceived in characteristic style by William A. R. (‘Billy’) Collins in 1943 at the height of war, the series tapped into the optimistic outlook of the immediate post-war world and the spirit of reconstruction. Other natural history and conservation titles of the period (like those published by Batsford) were backward looking, amateurish and elitist. Collins sought to produce something new and radical that would introduce ordinary readers to the world of nature informed by the latest scientific research. Billy Collins originally approached the ornithologist James Fisher (1912–70) to edit the series. Fisher was enthusiastic and created an editorial board comprising James Gilmour, Margaret Davies and Sir Julian Huxley to drive the project forward. Booksellers and other publishers regarded the original brief of thirty-six titles to cover all British natural history at the time as hopelessly risky. A significant appointment was distinguished photographer Eric Hosking as photographic

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Figure 4.3 Map: Scotland of Old.

editor to oversee illustration quality. The series was noted for the standard of its illustration, which included colour photographic plates, a distinct innovation for a popular series. Indeed high design values were the hallmark of the series, in particular the jacket artwork of Cli≠ord and Rosemary Ellis and Robert Gillmor.

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The first title Butterflies by E. B. Ford appeared in 1945 and was an instant bestseller, subscribing 20,000 copies pre-publication. Encouraged by the reception, Collins expanded the series quickly and despite (or perhaps because of ) their popular success eminent scientists flocked to contribute. Frank Fraser Darling’s The Natural History of the Highlands and Islands of 1947 was a landmark synthesis of Scottish conservation issues that was influential in shaping government policy towards rural Scotland. As well as traditional naturalists’ handbooks on flora and fauna, the series embraced the emerging disciplines of ecology and environmental management. Many leading environmental scientists, like Max Nicolson, made their first major contributions via the series. Fisher was employed by Collins until 1954 to edit and develop the series, and he remained involved with it until his death. Ultimately almost 100 titles were published and ‘the aim of the series . . . to interest the general reader . . . by maintaining a high standard of accuracy . . . in presenting the results of modern scientific research’ (series statement printed on the half title verso of all volumes) was admirably maintained throughout. First published as hardbacks, many volumes were reprinted as cheap paperbacks and many titles remain in print. Several, like Sir Kenneth Mellanby’s Pesticides and Pollution (1969) were probably the first overview statements of what later became major areas of scientific research and public concern. The New Naturalist series was and remains a major successful exercise in scientific popularisation and introduced many professional biologists, geologists, geographers and ecologists to their careers. Rigorous enough to satisfy professionals yet accessible enough for general readers, the series developed a large loyal following and first editions are widely collected. As a case study in successful publishing entrepreneurship determining and scoping a new and dynamic market for good popular science, it remains unsurpassed, while being one of the primary wellsprings of the modern environmental conservation and ecological movements (Marren).

Cartographic publishing Perhaps the most distinctive component of Scotland’s publication output was cartography in the form of sheet and wall maps, atlases, globes and topographic models, promotional maps, gazetteers, route books, star charts, navigational aids and maps to be included in a vast range of other publications, from encyclopaedias to directories, text books and guides. For over a century, Scotland and specifically Edinburgh possessed the world’s

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greatest concentration of map compilation, map printing and map publishing. This section outlines the history of the three leading companies. John Bartholomew & Son The greatest name both in reputation and output was John Bartholomew & Son. John Bartholomew I (1805–61) founded his business in 1826 but most of his work was unsigned for other publishers. He had a conservative view of map production, preferring to concentrate on the costly technique of copper engraving. He had little enthusiasm for the rapidly developing technology of chromolithography which enabled the mass production of full colour maps cheaply and quickly. His son John II (1831–93) was much more innovative and entrepreneurial. He adopted the style ‘geographer’ and increasingly began to issue maps on his own account rather than for other publishers. In 1884, he made an agreement jointly with John Walker & Company and W. H. Smith & Sons to distribute maps directly, which marked the beginning of Bartholomew as an independent map publisher. John II invested in up-to-date printing machinery, including steam-driven flatbed lithographic presses capable of printing in up to six colours. The most famous Bartholomew product was the ‘half-inch’ scale reduced Ordnance Survey Maps of Scotland produced first in thirty sheets between 1875 and 1886 and again in 1890 in twenty-nine sheets. These were issued on paper, backed in cloth and in dissected editions and adopted a scale quite deliberately that was not used by the national mapping agency. The great innovation of these maps was the use of contour layer colouring which produced maps of much greater legibility and attractiveness. John II retired in 1888 and the business was taken over by his son John George Bartholomew (1860–1920) under whose restless intelligence and business flair the firm became the world’s largest and most prolific map publisher. ‘J.G.’ recognised that his business was undercapitalised and formed a partnership with the largest Edinburgh printer and publisher, Thomas Nelson & Sons, moving the company to Nelson’s Parkside Works in 1888. Nelsons was one of the largest producers of school books for the British Empire and the partnership resulted in a series of ‘shilling’ school atlases, published by Nelson and compiled and printed by Bartholomew from 1891 which sold many hundreds of thousands of copies. Although described by Gardiner (1976) as a ‘merger’, the partnership with Nelson was more ambiguous, allowing Bartholomew to operate semi-autonomously. Nelson provided capital, directors and factory and o∞ce space, while Bartholomew maintained their own sta≠, printing machines and continued to provide maps for many other publishers, including Newnes, Oxford

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University Press and Macmillan. The financial security brought by the Nelson partnership allowed J.G. to develop high-cost projects like the creation of the layer-coloured half-inch sheets for England and Wales (1897–1903) and the Citizen’s Atlas (1898) which lasted through eight editions until 1952. J.G. developed many innovative geographical products, including thematic and promotional mapping. The most successful venture by far was the half-inch series of the British Isles which outsold the o∞cial Ordnance Survey one-inch series many times over and whose eight colour printing was the most technically sophisticated of any contemporary map. It was supplemented by a quarter-inch series from 1896. In 1911 the firm moved from Nelson’s works to nearby Duncan Street into the custom-designed ‘Edinburgh Geographical Institute’. It cost almost £15,000 to erect and furnish the new premises. Output increased and during the First World War, Bartholomew produced many millions of sheet maps for military use, as well as continuing to produce civilian maps and atlases. As John III’s health began to fail, he planned to regain his firm’s independence and in 1919, after an amicable dissolution of the partnership with Nelson, John Bartholomew & Company Limited was incorporated. John IV (1890–1962) took over as chairman and managing director in 1920. Early in his stewardship, the firm completed the work on the Times Atlas (1922) which has remained the touchstone of modern atlas production (Barclay). Atlases and the half-inch series were continuously modified and updated, and continued to provide the company’s main income stream but innovations included illustrated souvenir maps (The Royal River 1937) and the first full-colour Road Atlas of Great Britain (1944). By 1945, the company employed 140 people and was the largest map publisher in the Western world. Post-war activity included the development of the five-volume Times Atlas of the World (1955–60), numerous road atlases, and atlases of China (1974) and the Moon (1969). The largest new project was the Reader’s Digest Great World Atlas (1961) produced in many editions and languages and very significant for the ultimate fate of the firm. John IV’s three sons (Robert, Peter and John C.) took over the firm and under the last’s imaginative and energetic cartographic editorship produced some remarkably beautiful and interesting ‘special maps’ of which Scotland of Old (1960) is probably the most attractive. The half-inch series was modernised and rebranded and when the Ordnance Survey metricated its one-inch sheet maps to 1:50,000 scale in 1974, Bartholomew followed by launching a parallel 1:100,000 series in 1975. This was to be the last major independent publication of the firm. In 1980, the Readers’ Digest Association took over the firm completely and devoted its resources to atlas production. In

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turn, the firm and its assets were sold on to News International in 1985, who first logically merged it with Times Books, and later incorporated it into the Atlas and Reference Division of HarperCollins publishers. W. & A. K. Johnston (and G. W. Bacon) Ltd William and Alexander Keith Johnston (1804–71) set up in partnership in 1826 as jobbing engravers. In 1843, they published The National Atlas of General Geography which was followed up in 1848 by the Physical Atlas, one of the first full colour atlases to attempt to follow a thematic scheme. Alexander’s interests focused on geography in education and the firm increasingly specialised in maps for schools and particularly wall maps and globes. In 1861, A. Keith Johnston snr published the first edition of the Royal Atlas of Modern Geography, containing forty-eight maps. By 1914 it had gone through at least twelve editions, becoming Johnston’s Handy Royal Atlas of Modern Geography, with sixty-one full colour lithographed folio maps and an eighty-four page index. While never selling as many as Bartholomew’s Citizen’s Atlas, (it was more than double the price), it was the library atlas of choice throughout the British Empire (Johnston 1925). By 1900, W. & A. K. Johnston had established one of the country’s largest lithographic printing facilities at Edina Works in Easter Road in Edinburgh. In 1915 it approached Bartholomew with an o≠er to buy the latter which was rejected. Relations between the two firms remained cordial if competitive. Johnston introduced a half-inch British map series that undercut the Bartholomew series’ price and claimed greater clarity and legibility. In 1956, Johnston took over the long-established London map publisher G. W. Bacon who had specialised in pocket street maps of London and other cities. It was also noted globe makers. The Bacon business was transferred to Edinburgh but the imprint kept its identity Although technically very proficient and diversified, Johnston was very vulnerable to business change. Much of its map sales were exported to the British Commonwealth for educational purposes and with curriculum change, together with the loss of the banknote printing business for the National and Royal Banks of Scotland in the early 1960s, it declined. In 1968 it went out of business. Gall & Inglis The most venerable but least well-known of the Edinburgh triumvirate of map publishers was Gall & Inglis founded as jobbing printers Turnbull & Gall in 1808. James Gall (1784–1874) was a wood engraver who had

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interests in education. In 1847 he went into partnership with his future sonin-law Robert Inglis and specialised in the publication of improving and religious literature. The impetus for map publishing came from his son, Rev. James Gall jnr. (1808–95) who encouraged the acquisition of the London map publisher G. F. Cruchley in 1871. James jnr. was a Church of Scotland minister with interests in astronomy, mathematics and exploration. His main contribution to cartography was the development of the Gall Stereographic, Isographic and Orthographical Map Projections (1885). Although not directly involved in the business, he influenced its publication of astronomical and cartographical works including Norton’s Star Atlas. Under the direction of James Gall Inglis (1859–1939), Robert’s son, the company established a printing works at Bernard Terrace and then moved to a purpose-built factory at Newington Road in 1924. The main business of the firm at this time was the publication of ready reckoners but it published ‘contour road books’ from 1900 for motoring use and almost inevitably produced its own half-inch scale coloured map sheets of the British Isles in competition to Bartholomew and Johnston. The road books, star charts and astronomical atlases, cycling and walking guides, and ready reckoners remained a mainstay of the firm’s business until 1975 when the last survivor of the family, Robert Morton Gall Inglis, died and the business was wound up. Part of the reason for Scotland’s mapping ascendancy was serendipity and the fortuitous synchronicity of three entrepreneurial geographers, Bartholomew, Johnston and Gall. Other factors of significance were the rise of Scottish tourism, which stimulated the provision of guides, and an early appreciation of the importance of recreational cycling and motoring which inspired the half-inch maps and road atlases. There was also a pool of highly-skilled lithographic artists and an active intellectual life and appreciation of geography (Withers). Iain Stevenson

The scientific publishing of Oliver & Boyd Oliver & Boyd was an old established general publisher whose o∞ces were located in the cramped and picturesque medieval close of Tweeddale Court o≠ Edinburgh’s High Street. For most of its history, its publishing had concentrated on ephemeral non-fictional and school books but from the early 1940s until it lost its independence in the 1970s it also developed a remarkably high powered and distinctive scientific list of the highest quality. Why this came about is uncertain:

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they were a small, undercapitalised, private company, owned in the last phase of their independent existence by the local bookselling family, the Thins. The books they produced were to the highest production standards and involved costly expenditure on typesetting, illustrations, paper and binding. It is likely that their output reflected the tastes and interests of their editors and owners but it also echoes the heritage of Scottish scientific publishing that we have traced elsewhere. Oliver & Boyd specialised in three scientific areas: the first and most extensive was ornithology. Over thirty years from 1945, they produced a succession of authoritative, detailed and wonderfully illustrated treatises on bird life that covered most of the world. The key author was David Armitage Bannerman (1886–1979), a curator at the British Museum (Natural History) and a prolific author. His major work was the twelve-volume Birds of the British Isles, which Oliver & Boyd issued between 1953 and 1963. This exhaustive and authoritative work covered the subject in detail and was illustrated by specially commissioned colour paintings. It remains unsurpassed today and its compilation would have been a lifetime’s work for any scientist, but Bannerman also wrote an eight-volume Birds of Tropical West Africa (1945–51) and a four-volume Birds of the Atlantic Islands (1963–8) as well as singlevolume studies of bird life of Cyprus and elsewhere. All were illustrated in colour and well printed and bound. Alongside Bannerman, the world’s leading ornithologists like Charles Vaucher (Sea Birds, 1960) and E. A. Smythies (Birds of Borneo, 1958) contributed large works of similar standard to the list. By 1965, Oliver & Boyd had become probably the most important ornithological publisher in the world. The second area of specialisation was mathematics. This is notoriously a di∞cult subject for publishers since the market is comparatively small and until recently mathematical typesetting, which requires specialist expertise and equipment, was fearsomely expensive. Nevertheless, the Oliver & Boyd University Mathematical Series (for example, J. M. Hyslop, Infinite Series, 1942) was the most prestigious and widely known publishing in the area challenged probably only by the titles produced by Blackie. The third area was geology and geomorphology. The South African earth scientist Lester King wrote two important titles analysing scenery and process in the landscape, and Keith Clayton edited an innovative series of high level text books including titles on weathering, and coastal and glacial erosion. J. B. Sissons’ The Evolution of Scotland’s Scenery (1966) echoed Geikie’s work of a century previously and was a major synthesis of theory and fieldwork. Some ambitious projects in

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this area never eventuated. A multi-volume Geology of South America was begun in the 1950s and indeed much of the text was set up in standing type but it was never completed or published. Gordon Craig’s magisterial Geology of Scotland, commissioned originally by Oliver & Boyd, was eventually published by the short-lived Scottish Academic Press in the early 1990s. Oliver & Boyd also published extensively in soil science (E. A. Fitzpatrick’s Pedology was a pioneering work in the area), ecology and biology, recruiting authors mainly from Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen Universities. Many of these works have become regarded as foundation texts in new disciplines or research areas. Despite (or perhaps because of ) this late flowering of high quality scientific publishing, Oliver & Boyd encountered severe financial problems and they may have overstretched their resources by an overambitious programme. In 1970 they were bought by Pearson and quickly transformed into the Scottish educational division of Longman. The scientific list was dismantled and apart from a few titles that were transferred to Longman’s higher education division, where they were rescued, their distinguished scientific programme withered.

O∞cial publishing O∞cial Publishing is neglected, although it is pervasive in the lives of all citizens. Government publications range from Acts of Parliament to telephone directories, tax forms and guide books, maps and educational materials. For most of the period of this volume o∞cial publishing was under the aegis of Her (or His) Majesty’s Stationery O∞ce (HMSO), a vote-funded government department, although it latterly in the 1980s became an arms-length trading fund, and was eventually privatised in 1996 when it became simply The Stationery O∞ce (TSO). It no longer has a monopoly on government publishing and many other publishers compete for the publications business of government departments. Distinctive government publishing in Scotland in the modern era dates from the Secretary for Scotland Act of 1885, when the provision of stationery and printing and publishing for Scottish administrative functions was transferred from the Home O∞ce (Milne: 15–16). The elaboration of powers of the Scottish Secretary made it essential for speed and e∞ciency that government documents generated by St Andrew’s House were produced in Scotland. Material relating to education, agriculture, fisheries and health, among others, was printed and distributed in Scotland by contracted commercial firms. The Registrar General for Scotland’s o∞ce also published statistical material (mainly the decennial census results and

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summary tables) as did various statutory and o∞cial bodies, like the Royal Commission for Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS). HMSO managed Scottish o∞cial printing and publishing although the o∞ce had no permanent sta≠ based in Scotland for almost twenty years after the Act. The post of King’s Printer and Stationer in Scotland had been surrendered in 1833 (Barty-King: 21). The system of numbered warrants which was used by the Treasury to authorise and control o∞cial expenditure was London-based, and remotely controlled Morrison & Gibb as o∞cial printer and Oliver & Boyd as sales agent for government publications to booksellers and individuals. The most important government publication in Scotland was the daily ‘state’ newspaper, the Edinburgh Gazette, first published in 1793 and fully taken over by HMSO in 1843. Although it had (and has) only a tiny specialist circulation, the Gazette is necessary to the business of government as it prints essential legal and administrative notices, which until ‘gazetted’ do not o∞cially exist or have force. In 1901, the controller of HMSO assumed the title of Queen’s Printer of Acts of Parliament in Scotland and this encouraged the establishment of a dedicated Scottish branch (its first outside London) in March 1906 with six sta≠ to handle Scottish business. Until 1911, all HMSO sales were handled by agencies but the expiry of the Oliver & Boyd contract (and its poor management) encouraged an experiment with ‘direct selling’. The first government bookshop in the country was therefore opened in Edinburgh in 1912 (in Castle Street, later Lothian Road) and proved a great success. Other shops followed throughout the UK from 1915. The social legislation of the 1906 Liberal government greatly increased publishing output, as did the military and civilian needs of the First World War. By 1925, HMSO in Scotland was a sizeable operation, producing a wide range of materials for the Scottish O∞ce departments, the judiciary and other o∞cial bodies. In 1950, business had grown so much that a new warehouse (reputedly the largest pre-stressed concrete structure in Europe) was constructed at Sighthill. To avoid dependence on commercial printers HMSO acquired its own ‘Edinburgh Press’ in 1963 and by 1965 it had invested in probably the most advanced computer typesetting facilities in the UK. When HMSO became a trading fund, Edinburgh was the largest government printing and publishing operation outside London. By the mid-1980s, change was in the air in Scottish politics. Nationalism and local issues (particularly after the poll tax debacle) led to demands for more Scottish autonomy and despite the centralising tendencies of the Thatcher and Major governments a sop to this feeling was thrown by the policy makers of HMSO. A glamorous new ‘Publications Centre’ with a

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stylish atrium, o∞ces and a warehouse was built on the suburban Edinburgh business park of South Gyle and was fully sta≠ed with editorial, design, production and sales sta≠. As well as producing mundane government papers HMSO Scotland embarked on an energetic and prolific general publishing programme. A flood of full colour guidebooks, recipe books, popular histories and even a series of children’s books poured out of the Gyle and for a brief moment in 1995 HMSO were Scotland’s largest publishers. Many of the titles were commercial flops and the overheads of the operation were unsustainable. When HMSO were privatised in 1996 the Gyle operation came under scrutiny. The publishing programme was dismantled and the building sold to the Post O∞ce. Objectively, a government publisher has no business in dabbling in the kind of high cost risky trade publishing that appeared between 1990 and 2000 under the HMSO banner but much of it was genuinely innovative and produced to the highest standards. TSO maintains a toehold in Scottish publishing although the closure of the Edinburgh government bookshop and residual publishing operation was seriously discussed in 1998. The reconvention of the Scottish Parliament in 1999 produced a requirement for a daily published record of debates (Hansard) which TSO produces under contract. The Scottish Executive continues to require publications of all sorts to support its activities and the Edinburgh Gazette continues its stately daily progress into its third century. TSO, however, has no longer any absolute right to o∞cial publications and its various attempts since privatisation to reinvent itself as a business information company have not been successful. Nevertheless the controller of HMSO (e≠ectively the regulator of TSO) remains a high government o∞cial, and as well as retaining the title of ‘Queen’s Printer’ is also the director of the O∞ce of Public Sector Information (OPSI), with much involvement in ‘e-government’. It may well be in the electronic realm that the state rediscovers its publishing role. Iain Stevenson

Reference Publishing Sarah Pedersen Reference publishing is the term used to describe the publishing of a diverse range of products, including dictionaries, atlases, encyclopaedias, bibliographies, directories, guides and the many reference works aimed at the academic, educational and professional sectors. Such products – reference works are not necessarily produced in book form – are distinguished by the fact that they are not made to be read from the beginning to the end. The user – rather than reader – either turns directly to the entry that is useful at that moment or might browse through looking for an interesting entry. Neither are these reference works intended to be stand-alone products. Rather, they are intended to supplement other books or activities. Scotland has had a long tradition of publishing reference books, one of the most prolific publishers in this respect being W. & R. Chambers, now Chambers Harrap. The majority of companies involved in the field have been at least medium-sized since reference publishing requires a good amount of investment before a profit can be realised. The production of any type of reference work requires time and money and the finished product may be aimed at a very specific market, to which it will need to be precisely targeted. Reference works often require the employment of specialists such as lexicographers or indexers, many of whom may be freelance sta≠. However, once a reference product has established itself as key in its field, up-dated versions can be produced periodically, thus maximising profits. For example, the medical publishers E. & S. Livingstone published the first edition of John Glaister’s Text book of Medical Jurisprudence, Toxicology and Public Health in 1902. The thirteenth edition was published in 1973, by then under the authorship of John Glaister jnr. Reference works need to be objective and authoritative. Reputation and a strong brand that consumers trust are important, 346

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Figure 4.4 Chambers Dictionary, still a useful tool.

and also allow publishers to extend the product line with little additional marketing cost, thus the Chambers brand can support publications such as the Chambers 21st Century Dictionary, the Chambers Thesaurus, the Chambers Biographical Dictionary and Chambers Reference Online. The period started with the removal from Scotland of one of the most famous reference works of all time. In 1870 the founder of A. & C. Black, Adam Black, retired. His retirement was largely due to his disapproval of what he deemed to be the extravagant plans being made by his sons for the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Copyright in the encyclopaedia had belonged to the firm since it had been purchased from Archibald Constable at the time of that publisher’s failure. Despite Black’s disapproval, his three sons managed to sell half a million sets of the ninth edition, which appeared in twenty-four volumes between 1875 and 1889, although the company sold the copyright in 1897. Adam’s last surviving son, James Tait Black, retired in 1899, by which time Blacks had become a limited company firmly based in Soho Square, London, from where it published another famous reference work, Who’s Who. (The twentieth-century history of the Encyclopedia Britannica is covered in more detail later in the volume.) The Encyclopaedia Britannica may now be an American publication, but reference publishing is still a strength of Scottish publishing. It is

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the reference division of Collins, which is the part of the HarperCollins conglomerate still based at time of writing in Glasgow.

Conglomerates During the latter half of the twentieth century, publishing houses came together through merger and acquisition to form large, often transnational conglomerates. Three factors lay behind this movement: an awareness of the international nature of the publishing industry and the opportunities for transnational marketing of products; the need to exploit products across a number of mediums including film and television; and the general undercapitalisation of smaller, independent houses. The last a≠ected disproportionately those Scottish companies working in reference and educational publishing and made them easy prey for takeover. This led to the disappearance of Oliver & Boyd and the survival of a weakened Chambers. Oliver & Boyd could trace its history back to 1798, issuing Burns’ ‘Holy Willie’s Prayer’, for example, in 1801 as well as the poems of Ramsay, Fergusson and many anthologies of Scottish song. The company published the Edinburgh Almanac from 1812 until 1932 and the British Ready Reckoner in 1812. From the middle of the nineteenth century, Oliver & Boyd’s educational and medical lists dominated and provided the basis for strong export revenues. This position persisted until the second half of the twentieth century when the company retrenched to serve the distinctive Scottish educational market. The company was sold to the Financial Times in 1962, itself to be absorbed within the Pearson group of companies that included Longman – as Sarah Pedersen notes in her essay. The university and general publishing departments were immediately closed but the schools division continued to thrive. Its text books designed for the then new Standard Grade examinations anticipated the change from O-level to GCSE in England and Wales and captured some of the market south of the border. However, Oliver & Boyd was closed down completely by the then Pearson Longman in 1989 with a turnover of £2.75m and a net profit level of 10 per cent that failed to meet a centrally imposed target. The closure left Scotland without an educational publisher to supply the needs of its distinctive schools system. The Oliver & Boyd list was transferred to Longman in Harlow and allowed to expire in time. The division into which Oliver & Boyd sank, never to reappear, Pearson Education, by 2000 employed only 1,517 people in the UK but 9,180 in the USA and another 2,888 in branches worldwide. From a global perspective, it might seem that Scotland represents too small a market for recognition of its distinctiveness. Two types of conglomerate had emerged by the end of the twentieth century: one which was primarily print-based and operating in a number of

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di≠erent countries, as exemplified by Pearson Longman (despite their various excursions into television); and the other operating in di≠erent mediums of which book publishing was only one and not necessarily the most important, as exemplified by Vivendi who was eventually to be the parent company of Chambers. Chambers had created between the wars an important export market for their educational books. Tony Chambers later recalled: Chambers had a small o∞ce in London in the interesting area of Soho Square. Books were sent down by steamer from Leith to London every Friday, where they were stocked and supplied to London and South of England customers and to overseas. An e∞cient o∞ce of five to six people, including representatives and space for overseas visitors, agents and booksellers. Our major business was through agents in countries like Australia, New Zealand and Canada, India and the Far East. At one stage we were selling large quantities of infant readers to English speaking schools in India. We sold more of these Radiant Way and Radiant Readers in India than we ever sold over here. Of course, after a few years they began printing them themselves paying us a royalty . . . we had a good hold on the Scottish educational books and reference books. (Chambers 1999: 112) In addition to its dictionaries, particularly the familiar red-covered Twentieth-Century Dictionary, Chambers achieved a significant niche in maths text books. The Nu∞eld Maths Project was published in conjunction with another publisher, John Murray, between 1967 and 1969. It was a series of books for primary school age children and their teachers. They were put together with the support of the Nu∞eld Foundation and were intended to teach mathematics to children through emphasising techniques of learning rather than topics to be taught. The series of mathematics teaching guides, Modern Mathematics for Schools was originally published between 1965 and 1969, and provided a course to prepare children for the Scottish Ordinary Grade examinations. The series was created by the Scottish Mathematics Group, and was designed to allow for flexibility of teaching style, and to be useful to the full range of abilities. However, Chambers failed to renew and innovate in the 1970s and, given its lack of capital, weakening education list and investment in a steady but unspectacular backlist, became increasingly vulnerable to takeover. The French company Presses de la Cité, owner of Larousse, acquired Chambers for its strengths primarily in reference publishing and renamed it Chambers-Larousse. It then took over Harrap for its record in publishing bilingual dictionaries and merged the two acquisitions to form Chambers Harrap in order to strengthen its international position in

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reference publishing. Chambers lost its general publishing division and economies of scale were made within the conglomerate’s reference imprints. Presses de la Cité was itself taken over by Cie Générale des Eaux, a cash-rich water and environmental services company, that assumed the name Vivendi to reflect the diversity of its acquired interests. The year 2000 marked not only the end of the century but the year in which the French conglomerate, comprising still an environmental services division and a media division, within which book publishing was a key constituent, acquired Universal with its extensive interests in music, film and television. This produced a conglomerate with nearly $10.8bn (12.4 billion euros) in sales – excluding Universal Studios and Vivendi Environment (over 50 per cent of total group turnover). The publishing division accounted for 7 per cent of group turnover but that proportion was about to increase with the integration of the US publisher Houghton Mi±in. Chambers Harrap had survived but constituted only a very small part of the whole. (By 2006 Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd was part of Hachette Livre UK after a further sale in 2004.) Alistair McCleery

Having merged with cartographic publishers John Bartholomew & Son Ltd, also part of the News International stable since 1985, the Glasgow branch is also home to Collins Bartholomew, publishers of data and mapping products. Many other Scottish educational, academic and professional publishers have produced related reference works at some point in their history. Before expanding into educational publishing in the later nineteenth century, Blackie & Son published a series of reference works, mostly as subscription publications, for example, The Imperial Atlas of Modern Geography and The Imperial Bible Dictionary. Another educational publisher, Thomas Nelson & Sons, successfully published the Nelson Encyclopaedia in both the UK and United States in the early twentieth century. In the US the encyclopaedia appeared as a loose-leaf publication, with subscribers receiving revision leaves several times a year to keep the contents up to date, while the UK edition was produced in twenty-five volumes at 1s each. However, Combe suggests that the high investment required meant that publishers such as Edinburgh University Press and Holmes McDougall scaled down their publishing of reference materials during the recession-hit 1980s and that by the 1990s there were few small Scottish publishers producing such works. One area where smaller presses have remained active in reference publishing, however, is Scottish-related publishing. During the 1970s and 1980s Aberdeen

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University Press specialised in language-related reference works, such as the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue and the Concise Scots Dictionary – abandoned by Chambers and turned down by both Collins and Oxford University Press. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, many of the smaller Scottish presses specialise in ‘Scottish interest’ reference publishing, for example Neil Wilson Publishing’s Glasgow Almanac and Jacobite Dictionary or Luath Press’s Guides to Scotland. In addition, many of the publications produced by bodies such as the National Museums of Scotland or the Scottish Record O∞ce can be similarly described as reference works. Many of the products of specialist publishers, such as the legal publishers W. Green & Son Ltd, are also reference related, as seen, for example, in their Scottish Current Law, first published in 1948, or the Parliament House Book, which since 1982 has been produced as a loose-leaf publication, enabling readers to update the contents frequently. Reference publishing has always been at the forefront of the electronic revolution. Reference publishers were amongst the first to computerise the publishing process and have been pioneers in the production and distribution of their material in electronic form. During the late 1980s and 1990s many reference works were moved either online or onto CD-ROM, and the encyclopaedia market in particular became dominated by electronic products. Pang suggests several reasons for the almost complete shift from print encyclopaedias to electronic: more interactivity for the user; pricing – encyclopaedias have changed from expensive, one-time purchases to mass-market and much cheaper items – and bundling with personal computers. Sales figures of CD-ROM reference materials rose particularly sharply once they were ‘bundled’ with computer sales in order to advance the claims of technology companies such as Microsoft to being the standard and most comprehensive platform available. Twenty-first-century reference publishers are at the cutting edge of ‘information provision’ and are constantly challenged by the market for ever more practical information solutions. For example, Greens now delivers its Weekly Digest by email to its subscribers. Reference publishers are now expected to add value to the information they provide and therefore need to work together with technology and communication companies to provide their customers with speedy, accessible and accurate information.

Children’s Books Jane Potter The contribution of Scotland to children’s literature is not confined to its authors. There are the publishers. (Alison Douglas, The Scottish Contribution to Children’s Literature, 1966) Scottish publishers and authors have been responsible for creating some of the most iconic children’s books of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The so-called ‘Golden Age’ of children’s literature was ushered in by Macmillan’s publication of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland in 1865 and reached its zenith in the late 1920s with the last book in A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh series. Golden Age books reflected the changing attitudes towards childhood as they sought to educate but also amuse; teach but also entertain. Moral and religious messages were now intertwined with stories of adventure and fantasy. Periodicals as well as novels and collections of verse aimed at the young were published in great quantities with the advancement of printing and production technology. As Mary Kennaway observed, whether or not they had their base in Scotland or had migrated south or even further abroad, publishers and writers maintained an essentially Scottish outlook, one that was characteristic of Victorian ideology generally. Underlying all their books, from adventure tale to educational text, was the emphasis on thrift, morality, enterprise, hard work, self-advancement, and ‘an almost reverential attitude to material success’ (Kennaway: 16). Fairy stories such as those by Andrew Lang drew on Scottish as well as world folk tales and the adventures of the heroes created by R. L. Stevenson and R. M. Ballantyne were indicative of the Scottish drive for exploration. Publishers such as Blackie, Nelson and Collins, all of whom focused in their early years on religious and educational texts, never abandoned 352

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their roots. Their books for young readers, favoured as ‘rewards’ well into the 1930s, continued to have a worthy and moral message behind the tales of intrigue, travel or school mishap. Central to the Victorian zeal for self-improvement and advancement were the educational reforms of the 1870s. The Education Act of 1870 (England and Wales) and 1872 (Scotland) spawned not only the establishment of new schools and a dramatic rise in the number of students, but a consequent demand for books. Publishers eagerly responded and Scottish firms in particular were at the forefront of catering for this new market. Readers, primers and other ‘school series’ flowed from the presses. Nelson’s Royal Readers ‘sold in vast quantities throughout the British empire’ and its later Royal School series competed with Blackie and Arnold for a share of the colonial market. By the early 1880s Nelson’s educational books accounted for 88 per cent of the firm’s total profit. Macmillan had a particularly strong and lucrative educational catalogue that included W. G. Rutherford’s Greek Course, A. M. Cook and W. E. P. Pantin’s Latin Course, Hall and Knight’s Elementary Algebra for Schools, and English Literature for Secondary Schools edited by J. H. Fowler. There was ‘an even longer array of scientific textbooks’ (Morgan: 188). Of all the publishing phenomena of the Victorian period, reward books most reflect the values and preoccupations of the age. Awarded as prizes for good conduct, perfect attendance or excellence in lessons by schools and Sunday schools, these elegant and beautifully designed books with their gilt lettering and embossed bindings were the treasured possessions of generations of schoolchildren. Novels, collections of stories, nursery rhymes, biographies of famous Britons all could be ‘rewards’, whose origins lay in the evangelical publishing of such organisations as the SPCK. But commercial publishers found a lucrative market in the ‘public desire to teach young people the way to virtue’ (Cambridge Guide: 581). Blackie & Sons became the best known publisher of reward books, but other firms were also keen producers of such prizes. A catalogue from W. P. Nimmo, Hay & Mitchell from 1884, for example, lists rewards to suit all tastes and pocketbooks (Selection).

Blackie & Sons Ltd The firm that became known as Blackie & Sons Ltd was founded in Glasgow in 1809 by John Blackie (1782–1874). As printer and bookseller as well as publisher, Blackies established its reputation with reference works, educational texts and children’s books. The Education Acts of 1870 (England and Wales) and 1872 (Scotland), which increased the demand for

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grammars, primers and readers, provided Blackie with a lucrative market. Moreover, the firm responded with gusto to the Victorian culture of prizegiving and became one of the most well-known publishers of reward books. Such external forces provided opportunities but key to the firm’s enormous success in the late nineteenth century was the leadership of John Alexander (‘Jack’) Blackie (1850–1918), son of W. G. Blackie, the youngest son of John Blackie snr. An astute businessman with a strong academic ability and interest, Jack Blackie joined the firm in 1869 and became a partner in 1876 – just when the e≠ects of the Education Acts were beginning to manifest themselves. He ‘saw things on a grand scale and built a solid and successful juvenile list of a quality unmatched in his time’ (Newbolt 2004). In 1876 he oversaw the publication of the firm’s first school-book series, the Comprehensive Readers, a compilation of grammar, arithmetic, history and geography, as well as its first school editions of the classics, such as Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver’s Travels. Other series followed including the Century Readers (1888), the Model Readers (1905), and the Systematic Readers (1913–16). He also developed the firm’s reward books department, bringing on board G. A. Henty, ‘an author whose great and immediate popularity carried Blackie & Son at the very outset into the forefront as publishers of books for the young’ (Blackie 1959: 38). Facing Death and Under Drake’s Flag, both published in 1882, were the first of Henty’s hugely successful titles. A Blackie’s reward book could be counted on not only to be finely produced, well illustrated, and imaginative but to reinforce imperial ideology, patriotic values and the moral virtues of honesty, integrity and loyalty. Boys were entertained not only by Henty but by Robert Leighton, S. Baring Gould and Captain Brereton, while girls enjoyed the stories of Bessie Marchant, Alice Cockran and Angela Brazil. Blackie’s toy and picture books catered to young children as did the fantasy and fairy tales of George Macdonald. Macdonald’s At the Back of the North Wind and The Princess and the Goblin were mainstays of the firm. Blackie’s School and Home Library and Blackie’s Library of Famous Books featured the work of such writers as Fenimore Cooper, R. M. Ballantyne, Captain Marryat and Louisa May Alcott. Blackie’s Children’s Annual, first published in 1904, was one of the best annuals ‘ever produced for young children’ (Cambridge Guide: 86). Stories, poems and illustrations were combined in a lively and colourful format that was distinctive for its ‘careful and imaginative editorial attention to details, the high-quality printing in colour and tint, and artwork mostly in the manner of Art Nouveau and poster prints’ (87). Blackies opened its London and Dublin o∞ces in 1909 and, having consolidated its reputation and fortunes, were able to withstand the practical and financial pressures brought about by the First World War. Even with

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paper shortages and loss of sta≠ to the forces, they managed to keep up with the demand for books, especially for children, whose need for rewards and entertainment was perhaps greater than ever. Chief among the wartime children’s list was the Josephine series by Mrs Cradock, while the thrilling adventure tales that once featured historical figures such as Sir Francis Drake now exalted contemporary heroes in books such as With French at the Front by Captain Brereton or A Motor-Scout in Flanders by Captain Charles Gilson. Even the plucky schoolgirl became a heroine in novels like A Girl Munition Worker by Bessie Marchant. The firm was, however, scarred by personal sadness. Jack Blackie’s only son, John Stewart Blackie, was killed on the Somme in 1916 and it was said that the publisher never fully recovered from the loss, dying just after the armistice in 1918. The inter-war years o≠ered many opportunities for overseas trade and Blackies took advantage of the burgeoning educational markets in the 1920s, establishing subsidiaries in Australasia, India and Canada. It also expanded their UK operation, opening in 1929 new printing works on a 13acre site at Bishopbriggs in Glasgow. During the Second World War these would partly be used for shell manufacturing and the production of aircraft radiators, but the London o∞ces, along with those of many other publishers, were destroyed in the Blitz on the night of 10 May 1941. This, however, did not stop output and after the war the company issued ‘a great many new and successful school books’ and continued ‘to play no small part in the education of children in Britain and throughout the Commonwealth’ (Blackie 1959:62). Blackie dominated both the domestic and overseas educational markets until 1991 when they finally succumbed to the wave of conglomeration that had marked British publishing in the final decades of the twentieth century. Blackie & Son Ltd ceased trading and the various divisions were acquired by other firms, most notably their former arch-rival Nelson, which itself had become part of the Thomson Organisation in 1962. Yet Blackies was, for over 180 years, distinguished by ‘very long spans of individual service’ and a ‘strong thread of continuity’ (Blackie 1959: 63–4). For all its diversification and expansion, Blackies remained an essentially Scottish publisher, providing for generations of young readers a steady stream of books that both educated and entertained them. Jane Potter

One might select Nimmo’s Universal Gift Books (crown 8vo, 3s 6d each) that included The Life of Nelson and Women of History or Nimmo’s Young Ladies’ Library (crown 8vo, 3s 6d each), including Violet Rivers; or, Loyal to Duty, A Tale for Girls by Winifred Taylor and

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Friendly Fairies; or, Once Upon a Time. Cheaper editions could be had for at 2s or 2s 6d: Nimmo’s Library of History, Travel, and Adventure, Nimmo’s Library of Biography and Nimmo’s Boys’ Own Library. There was also Nimmo’s One Shilling Illustrated Juvenile Books, Nimmo’s Ninepenny Series for Boys and Girls and Nimmo’s One Shilling Favourite Reward Books. Collins launched its series of reward books in 1900, the first to be illustrated in colour. Sales eventually exceeded 1 million. With ‘the perfection of the photographic methods of three- and four-colour printing’ in the early twentieth century, reproduction of images was improved and became less expensive. A. & C. Black set a new standard for these gift books in 1901 when it began to issue its topographical series of colour plate books, including Oxford (1903) by Edward Thomas with paintings by John Fulleylove, Scotland (1904) by A. R. Hope Moncrie≠ and Tibet & Nepal (1905) illustrated and described by Walter Savage Landor. Rewards continued to be given well into the mid-twentieth century, and it is not unusual to find examples in second-hand bookshops still. In 1933, for instance, Jessie Oprey was presented with L. T. Meade’s A Sister of the Red Cross: A Tale of the South African War for her top marks at the Heneage Road Methodist Sunday School. Meade’s novel is indicative of the kinds of tales that characterised many reward books. The adventure story, often set in locales around the Empire, helped to inculcate imperial values in girls as well as boys. G. A. Henty, a Blackie author, inspired boys – and no doubt their sisters – with works such as The Young Colonists: A Story of the Zulu and Boer Wars (1898) and By Sheer Pluck: A Tale of the Ashanti War (1899).

Treasure Island Treasure Island, written at Braemar in 1881, was Robert Louis Stevenson’s first popular success as a novelist and, indeed, one of the most popular of all his works. It was inspired by the drawing of a map with his step-son Lloyd Osbourne and had the enthusiastic support of his father. Its original pseudonymous publication, as fourteen instalments by ‘Captain George North’ on the back pages of the periodical Young Folks between October 1881 and January 1882, made no particular impact. Stevenson was paid £37 7s 6d for the serialisation (but retained his copyright), and his wife Fanny tried to dissuade him from having it published in book form by Cassell & Co., but publication went ahead, after some revisions, in November 1883. The map which had inspired the story was sent to Cassell’s but never arrived, and Stevenson had to draw a new version (Knight: iv). The contract

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Figure 4.5 Treasure Island.

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with Cassell included an advance of £100 in two instalments and royalties of 10 per cent of the published price (Ellis: 66). W. E. Henley, negotiated the publishing deal, and at the end of December he wrote to Stevenson ‘The “Island” is a monstrous success. Booksellers are raging for it’ (qtd in Maixner: 16). The book has never been out of print since. On its publication in book form, Treasure Island received many enthusiastic reviews, and among the book’s early fans were Stevenson’s friend Andrew Lang, the Liberal leader William Ewart Gladstone, who is said to have sat up all night to read it, and George Meredith who described it as ‘a book to make one a boy again’ (qtd in Maixner: 17). In fact ‘[C]ritics in the loftiest kinds of papers, turning aside for the moment from the scarifying of pretentious adult works, gave expression to their delight in a boys’ book which was jolly for grown-ups to read’ (Munro: 14). Not all reviewers were enthusiastic: a May 1884 unsigned review in the Chicago periodical Dial concluded that it ‘will be relished by adventure-loving boys, but whether it will be wholesome reading for them is doubtful’ (qtd in Maixner: 142). The popularity that Treasure Island achieved on its original publication has continued. A survey of reading habits among school pupils who had not transferred to grammar school in 1940, and were due to leave school at 14 showed that Treasure Island was the most popular title among the boys, by a clear margin, though it was less popular among the girls (qtd in Rose 2001: 231–2). It provided a mainstay for some cheap reprint series such as Collins Classics, being one of the four titles that were consistent bestsellers over a long period (Steinberg: 362). In the 1960s, its continuing popularity helped keep printing presses busy. Eric Martin recalled that ‘if ever they did get a bit short, what they did was they just printed some more of Treasure Island or something like that’ (Holmes and Finkelstein 2001: 74). Treasure Island has been translated into many languages (ranging from French, German and Spanish, to Chinese, Croatian, Japanese, Russian and Swahili); filmed; dramatised for stage and radio; and adapted for many di≠erent readerships, especially since the expiry of the copyright. A comic book version which had originally appeared in 1949 was republished in 1989 ‘on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of Long John Silver’s seafood shoppe’ (Berkley: cover). With the development of ‘reading schemes’, Treasure Island has appeared in adapted and simplified forms, for example Alan MacDonald’s version for the Oxford Reading Tree reading scheme (2000). Books derived from screen versions which in their turn are based on Stevenson’s original have also been published: in 1977 the New English Library published a version ‘adapted from Walt Disney’s Productions’ screen presentation’ (Mo≠att 1977). In 1996, there was Muppet Treasure Island: The Movie Storybook, ‘adapted (loosely) from the movie Treasure Island . . . based (very, very loosely) on the novel by Robert Louis Stevenson’.

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Treasure Island continues to show no sign of waning popularity: in 2003 a guide to Scottish fiction for readers aged 10–14 described it as ‘one of the supreme fictions for confident young readers’. The guide itself is named Treasure Islands as ‘a reminder that Scotland has had a memorable place on the world map of children’s literature’ (Alison: 7, iv). Since 2000 a range of new editions, adaptations and translations have all appeared in book form, as well as audio versions and electronic resources. Helen Williams

The school story also reached its apotheosis at the turn of the century and publishers like Collins, who before the 1890s relied mainly on their bibles and reference works, now put more emphasis on the young reader. When William Collins III became a director, he set about changing the firm’s heavily religious, often cloying books for children, which were ‘more suitable for the sentimental adult than the inquiring child’ (Keir: 214). He revamped the children’s titles, giving the list a new energy. Adventure books and school stories flowed from the pens of Percy Westerman and Elsie Oxenham, under the editorship of Herbert Hayens, himself a well-known writer of stories for boys with his PlayUp series. Between 1903 and 1914 Collins produced ‘more than 500 di≠erent colour books for small children’ (Keir: 232). Thomas Nelson & Sons had its own stock of valuable and prolific writers for the young, among them R. M. Ballantyne, Charlotte Maria Tucker (A. L. O. E. or A Lady of England), and Evelyn Everett-Green. However, Nelsons policy of buying the copyright of a book outright on acceptance of the manuscript with the author receiving no other payment or royalty, caused friction, especially with Ballantyne, who is said to have labelled William ‘a mean old codger’. Ballantyne certainly had a grievance when the enormous popularity – and financial rewards for Nelson – of such novels as The Young Fur Traders and Coral Island are compared with what the author was paid for his copyright: between £50 and £60. Macmillan had great success early on with Charles Kingsley, whose book The Water-Babies (1863) earned huge profits for the firm as did Thomas Hughes’ Tom Brown’s School Days (1857). But their place in the canon of children’s literature was made by Charles Ludwidge Dodgson or Lewis Carroll with his Alice books. He was also one of their most eccentric and di∞cult authors. Dodgson’s obsession with detail ‘sorely tried the patience of his publisher’ on many occasions: ‘He wasted his own and everyone else’s time by his detailed wilfulness . . . not even a Scottish publisher could have cared as desperately as he – and

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desperately is the word – to give the public perfection’ (Morgan: 113). The experience certainly did not diminish the firm’s commitment to children’s literature and Macmillan was the first mainstream publisher to set up a children’s book department, ‘sta≠ed with editors and marketing directors who specialized in producing and selling children’s books’ (Hade: 299). The Empire boys and heroines of the Edwardian school story were transformed during the First World War to reflect the new conditions. Boys’ adventures were now centred on the western front in such novels as Captain Brereton’s Under Haig in Flanders (Blackie, 1917), or on the home front where spies were rife and it was up to the plucky girl to foil nefarious plots as in A Girl Munition Worker (Blackie, 1916) by Bessie Marchant. After 1918 Collins revamped its schoolbook policy and, influenced by new educational theory, discarded ‘many good old texts which had done duty since Victorian days’ (Keir: 247), and commissioned fresh titles from eminent dons and scholars. In 1934, Collins acquired the British rights to print books based on Disney films such as Snow White. This was a boon to the company’s finances for within five years sales exceeded 6 million. By the 1950s children’s books were the firm’s biggest export and the department had its own floor in the Glasgow building, formerly Blackie’s old printing works. The inter-war period was especially prosperous for the Dundeebased periodical publisher D. C. Thomson. It competed tirelessly with the London-based Amalgamated Press for its share of the market with its ‘big five’ bestsellers Adventure (1921); Rover (1922); Wizard (1922); Skipper (1930); Hotspur (1933). Through these stories, young readers: escaped to the ranges of the Wild West, the Sahara with the Foreign Service or Lost Cities in the Jungle. Their heroes tangled with monsters or robots. Closer to home, stories featured county cricket or league soccer, while the pupils of boarding schools such as Hotspur’s Red Circle were more like their devoted readers than the chaps of Amalgamated’s St Jim’s or St Frank’s. (Cambridge Guide: 80) Thomson’s weekly papers spawned annuals that proved hugely lucrative, including Beano (1940) and the Dandy (1939) – covered later in this section. Whilst girls may have had no place in Thomson’s tales for boys, they were not neglected by publishers. Papers such as School Friend (1919–29), Schoolgirl’s Own (1921–36) and Girls’ Crystal (1935–76) were complemented by annuals such as Mandy Stories for Girls, Twinkle and Judy for Girls.

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Annuals had been a feature of the periodical publishing industry since the nineteenth century but they came into their own in the early years of the twentieth. Nelson’s Children’s Annual had a number of incarnations including The Jolly Book: Jolly Pictures and Jolly Stories for Jolly Youngsters, edited by Edward Shirley, which ran from 1910 to 1927 and A Budget of Good Reading collected by Dr Richard Wilson which began in 1926. Given as rewards, annuals were cloth-bound and lavishly decorated and illustrated. Their less expensive cousin was the Budget, made with matt boards. The privations and paper rationing of the Second World War meant that Thomson as well as its rivals had to cut back on their production (Hunt: 208). Paper rationing, loss of sta≠ to the forces, and most crucially the destruction of thousands of books in the Blitz in 1940 resulted in a shortage of stock generally. Children’s books were no exception. With demand high, there was little incentive for publishers to try ‘anything new’ (Reynolds: 6). Content stayed much the same as it had before the war, even with the introduction of the 1944 Education Act, which abolished fees for secondary schools. Publishers felt ‘little pressure . . . to produce more books reflecting the social diversity of British children’ (Reynolds: 6). Blackie continued to publish Percy Westerman’s sea and naval adventures well into the 1950s, with Desolation Island (1950) and Held in the Frozen North (1956) following the same plot-lines as his Second World War books such as In Dangerous Waters and At Grips with the Swastika. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s Nelson reissued The Abbey Girls series by Elsie Oxenham, including The Abbey Girls at Home, The Abbey Girls Again and The Abbey Girls in Town, originally published in the 1920s. Reward books, some vastly out-of-date, continued to be given out at prize-days – much to the consternation of young students. There was an adherence to the public school ethos that had dominated education since the nineteenth century (Reynolds: 8). Books in Britain and books sent to the Commonwealth continued to reflect middle-class values and outlook. Nor did political change equal cultural change in publishing, which was still dominated by middle-class values and unchanged working practices inherited from previous generations (Reynolds: 6). Cultural conservatism, therefore, dominated the immediate postwar years, only to be challenged in the 1960s and 1970s. As Dennis Butt argues: The growth of international organizations such as the UN, and radio and television’s revelation of the world as global village, together with the swift liquidation of the British Empire from 1947

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onwards, also removed the imperial basis of many enterprises. The ideology of an expanding and self-confident British Empire, which had underpinned the rise of the 19th-century adventure story, was gradually eroded, and its replacement by a troubled, multiracial and democratic humanism sought new forms of story-telling. (349) As children’s literature became a serious subject for academic study and librarians began insisting that the books their patrons read reflected their social and economic diversity, publishers began to take note. School stories began to focus less on the public school and more on the state school system, and to reflect working-class life, ethnic minorities and formerly taboo subjects such as divorce. Such general changes in children’s literature coincided with a growing literary revival in Scotland that looked to the folk traditions of the Highlands and Islands, interrogated the urban landscapes of Edinburgh and Glasgow, and sought to reinvigorate the Scots language as a medium for verse and prose. The Gaelic Books Council was founded in 1968 to promote the Gaelic language, and worked hard to widen the provision of reading material for both children and adults. Children’s books increasingly drew on folk tales and Scottish history, including Allan Campbell Maclean’s Ribbon of Fire (1952) and Mollie Hunter’s The Ghosts of Glencoe (1963). Yet as Mary Kennaway has argued, the work of such a ‘distinctively Scottish group of writers, conscious of their Scottish heritage . . . is not narrow and parochial but is recognised as a valuable contribution to the mainstream of children’s literature’ (Kennaway: 25). The ‘winds of change’ swept through the world of children’s books in the 1960s, disturbing and altering beyond recognition the hitherto stable spaces of their publishers. Acquisitions, mergers and takeovers occurred in rapid succession, though such developments were not new to the book trade. In 1915 Nelson took over the firm of T. C. & E. C. Jack. Macmillan, in what became known in company lore as ‘the Bentley Purchase’, bought the stock and possessions – and took on many of the employees – of Richard Bentley & Son in 1898 for £8,000. This ‘formidable acquisition’ meant that Macmillan acquired among other titles, ‘a list of fiction strong in women’, including Rhoda Broughton and Mrs Henry Wood (Morgan: 183–4). In 1953 Collins bought the publishing house of Geo≠rey Bles Ltd, which had been founded in 1923, and in 1955 bought another small publishing house, the Harvill Press. But the mergers and acquisitions of the last forty years of the twentieth century were an altogether di≠erent a≠air. Large multimedia conglomerates such as News Corporation, Pearson and Bertelsmann, whose interests were not confined to book publishing, began vying for

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the assets of family-run firms, many of whose business practices had remained largely unchanged since the nineteenth century. Nelson became part of the Thomson group in 1962. Its American wing was sold to the Nashville, Tennessee-based Royal Publishers Incorporated and in 2000 the London firm merged with Stanley Thornes to become Nelson Thornes, now part of the Dutch company Wolters-Kluwer. The majority of the family shares of Macmillan were sold in 1995 to the Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck. Collins was taken over by News International in 1989 and merged with the New York firm of Harper & Row to become HarperCollins. The world of publishing as it had been known for over 200 years was fast disappearing. Scottish children’s literature in the 20th century o≠ers a rich variety of material and is increasingly international in scope. The publishing industry to support it has been less robust, despite a number of valiant e≠orts to establish a list worthy of Scotland’s literary heritage. (Fraser: 1,265) In the 1980s, new funding streams were made available to small Scottish publishers. The ‘valiant e≠orts’ noted in the quote benefited greatly from the support of the Scottish Arts Council, under the aegis of the Scottish Executive. Whilst the SAC funding policy has not been without its share of critics and controversy, there is little doubt that the Arts Council, through their grant and subsidies to publishers and writers, have encouraged the development of indigenous Scottish children’s books and resources for children’s literature. Perhaps their most famous recipient of a writer’s grant is J. K. Rowling, who received £8,000 to complete her manuscript of the second Harry Potter book. The SAC supports the Scottish Publishers Association which in turn helps its publishing members to market and promote their books. The SAC is also a sponsor of Scottish Book Trust, whose aim is to make ‘every child a reading child, every adult a reading adult, and every reader a lover of good books’. A number of Scottish firms are currently dedicated to the production and distribution of children’s books. The Scottish Children’s Press was launched in 1995 and became an independent company in 1999. Having started in Aberdeen the press then moved to Edinburgh before settling finally in Newbattle Abbey, Dalkeith. Its books range from teaching materials to fiction in Scots, English and Gaelic. Glowworm Books publishes the hugely successful Maisie of Morningside series by Aileen Paterson and also distributes books to Scottish schools. Canongate launched its Kelpie reprint series in 1983, featuring traditional Scottish tales. The series was bought in 2002 by the Floris

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Figure 4.6 Kelpies cover.

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Press, who continued to develop the range of authors and titles ranging from George Mackay Brown’s The Six Lives of Frankle the Cat to Moira Miller’s Doom of Soulis.

Kelpies Although Scottish publishers had a long tradition of producing books for the children’s market, during the twentieth century they were best known for educational books such as Nelson’s Royal Readers and other text books, and for cheap reprint series. In the 1970s, however, a number of new Scottish publishers for the general market were established, such as Mainstream and Canongate, and in the mid-1980s the latter developed a children’s list with a specifically Scottish flavour, called ‘Kelpies’. The criterion for inclusion was that the books had to be based in Scotland or concern Scottish themes. The earliest publications, in 1984, included Mollie Hunter’s The Lothian Run and The Spanish Letters; Flash the Sheepdog by Kathleen Fidler; and Snake among the Sunflowers by Joan Lingard. Before long, the list broadened in scope to include both a wider range of contemporary reprints, but also classic books for children such as The Wind on the Moon by Eric Linklater; Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island; The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald; as well as less well-known titles such as The Magic Walking Stick by John Buchan and The Big House by Naomi Mitchison. Also listed were new publications such as Quest for a Kelpie by Frances Mary Hendry in 1986. The range of themes included ‘ghosts, spy stories, animals and the countryside, witches, mysteries and secrets, adventures’ advertised under the slogan ‘Get a kick from a Kelpie’ (Hunter 1989: prelims). One aim of the list was to publish lesser-known authors who were likely to be ignored by London-based publishers. One of the authors who figures prominently in the Kelpies list is Kathleen Fidler. She was born in Wigan in 1899, and was a teacher until her marriage in 1930. She settled in Scotland with her husband, James Goldie, moving to Lasswade when he was appointed as a manager at the Bank of Scotland. She not only wrote fiction for children, but for radio, particularly the BBC’s ‘Children’s Hour’ and schools broadcasts. She was also wellknown locally, giving story readings to children in the public library at Bonnyrigg. She died in 1980. Her main publishers, Blackie, established an award in 1981 in her memory, which was administered by Book Trust Scotland. Its aim was to encourage new and established Scottish authors to write for children aged between 8 and 12, and Blackie published the winning novels, until the award was discontinued in 2002 after Blackie was taken over by Hodder. Winners included Theresa Breslin, who was born in Kirkintilloch, and has spent much of her adult life working as a librarian.

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She won the prize in 1987 with Simon’s Challenge, first published by Blackie in 1988, and republished as a Kelpie in 1989 (Allen 2005: 136, 151–2). Kelpies also published her novels Di≠erent Directions (1989) and New School Blues (1992). Mollie Hunter, another prominent Kelpies author, was born in East Lothian in 1922 and was educated at Preston Lodge High School in Prestonpans. Financial pressures meant that she left school at 14 to work in her grandfather’s flower shop. She married in 1940, but continued her education independently throughout this time and while raising a family, beginning her career as a writer in 1953. Her books for children received numerous awards, including the Carnegie Medal in 1975 for The Stronghold, and the Boston Globe Horn Book Award Honor Book in 1976 for A Stranger Came Ashore (republished as a Kelpie in 1994) (Greenway: xv–xvi). The corporate takeovers of Scottish publishers in the 1990s, including Scottish-based children’s publishers Blackie and Collins as well as Canongate itself meant that children’s books on Scottish themes were again marginalised. However, the contribution of the Kelpies list to the promotion of Scottish children’s books was not over: in 2001 Floris Books, another Edinburgh-based publisher, acquired the Kelpies list. Floris have republished earlier titles as well as launching new titles. The current list includes two sub-series for di≠erent age groups: Young Kelpies for 7–10-year-old readers, and Classic Kelpies and Contemporary Kelpies for the 9–12 age group. Floris Books has also established a Kelpies Prize to ‘encourage new Scottish writing for children’: the book must be for the Contemporary Kelpies age-group, be previously unpublished and set ‘wholly, or mainly, in presentday Scotland’ (www.florisbooks.co.uk/kelpiesprize/). The first award (to Mike Nicholson for Catscape) was made in 2005. Helen Williams

New technology has, of course, transformed the publishing industry and Scottish children’s publishers in particular have used the world wide web to create attractive, exciting and interactive sites for marketing and promotion. Reading initiatives, too, have prospered as a result of the new mediums. BRAW (Books, Reading and Writing), for instance, operates under the umbrella of Scottish Book Trust and is an online network specifically designed ‘to promote books, reading and writing for young people, by authors and illustrators living in Scotland’ (www.scottishbooktrust.com). Yet the international reach of the world wide web has meant the audience for such books is not confined just to Scotland. Such a scope means

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that the possibilities of new technology echo the ideology of nineteenthcentury publishers and writers whose values and working practices were essentially and always Scottish, but whose outlook reached beyond Scotland’s borders to educate and entertain a wider world of young readers.

Magazines and Comics Joseph McAleer The history of magazines and comics in Scotland during the period 1880–2000 represents a kind of golden age. It also is an anomaly, a surprising success story for a single firm whose fame and fortune extended far beyond the country’s borders. Where competition existed in Scotland among publishers of newspapers, literary journals, and books, magazine and comic publishing was dominated by one firm: D. C. Thomson & Co. Ltd of Dundee. Its titles have entered folklore: the People’s Friend, My Weekly, Hotspur, Dandy, Beano. It is fascinating to consider how one firm monopolised the media in an entire country for a century, with little or no competition. Critics over the years have marvelled at D. C. Thomson’s ‘astonishing readership penetration’ (Macdonald 1978: 13). To this day, its success has stemmed from a strict, family-controlled firm that resisted any and all influence from outside forces, especially unions. Keeping a tight rein on costs and sta≠, D. C. Thomson could respond quickly to change. But it was a good employer and was repaid by a work force that was fiercely loyal and spanned generations of families, even to this day. If Edinburgh was known for the 3 B’s: Beer, Biscuits and Books, Dundee was known for the 3 J’s: Jute, Jam and Journalism. Of the last, Dundee mirrored the rest of Britain in the late nineteenth century, a time of major expansion in the ‘new reading public’ nurtured by the growth in elementary education and a corresponding rise in literacy. Publishers catered to the tastes of a specific audience (the lower-middle and working classes) more closely than before to ensure the maximum sale of new reading matter and to cover rising production costs. Working women in factories, for example, were fond of the ‘blood-andthunder’ pulp magazines which were inexpensive, exciting to read and, more importantly, easy to pick up and put down. 368

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W., D. C., & F. Thomson, the forerunner of D. C. Thomson & Co. Ltd, was founded in 1886 by a prominent Dundee family. In that year William Thomson II, a ship owner, rescued the Dundee Courier newspaper from financial trouble and acquired its publisher, Charles Alexander & Co. At the age of 23 his son, David Couper (D. C.) was placed in charge, soon joined by another son, Frederick. In later years D. C. recognised his brother, who died in 1917, as the genius behind the firm’s early success with the Dundee Courier and the Weekly News, and two weekly papers for women, Weekly Welcome (1896–1960) and Red Letter (1899–1987). William Thomson died in 1896, and in 1905 the company name was changed to D. C. Thomson & Co. Ltd. At heart, D. C. Thomson was a newspaper publisher. In 1900, the Dundee Evening Post was launched, merging with the Evening Telegraph in 1905. The Sunday Post was founded in Glasgow in 1914. The development of magazines and comics was an outgrowth after the First World War, to make use of printing press downtime between newspaper editions. But the firm may also have been pushed in this direction by its principal rival, John Leng & Co., owned by Sir John Leng, Liberal and Progressive MP for Dundee. Leng published the two most popular weeklies, the People’s Journal (1858–1990) and the People’s Friend (1869–). The firm boasted in 1898 that the Journal was read by 1 million people every week. The Friend, next to Chambers’s Journal, ‘is the most widely-circulated periodical north of the Tweed’, Leopold Wagner noted in the same year (Wagner: 133). Leng’s advertisements for the Friend in the 1880s display the hallmark of future D. C. Thomson publications, the ‘personal touch’: ‘Those who begin to read the FRIEND stick to it, because they cannot do without it. It becomes their own familiar Friend, supplying them with counsel, advice, recreation, amusement, instruction, pleasure, and satisfaction.’ Twenty years of competition between Thomson and Leng ended in 1906 when a pooling arrangement of the two companies was reached. Thomson retained a two-thirds interest in the new firm, and Leng (three di≠erent families), one-third. The exact reasons for this merger are unknown, but it may have been precipitated by the death, in 1906, of Sir John Leng. In time the management of both companies was assumed by D. C. Thomson, although the two companies continued to publish separately. In retrospect, the acquisition of John Leng was a shrewd investment which considerably strengthened D. C. Thomson. The People’s Friend, along with My Weekly (1910–), Secrets (1932–90), and Flame (1935–40), were the most successful women’s papers published by Leng after the merger. The Leng titles, moreover, found their largest following in

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Scotland, thereby giving D. C. Thomson an assured market there while they concentrated on penetrating the market south of the Tweed. The firms also shared a similar management style and paternalistic approach to the workforce, as well as an aversion towards unions. Morale was high, and the firm guaranteed good wages and job security (even during the Depression) for as long as an employee wished to work. When a paper failed, sta≠ were not laid o≠, but transferred to other duties. Such reorganisation and adaptation was relatively painless at D. C. Thomson given the size of sta≠s; five or six people worked on the editorial side of each paper, for example, as compared with forty or fifty on London-based competing papers. Throughout its history, D. C. Thomson has always taken pride in its Scottish base and remoteness from London, which it believes has put it more in touch with the ‘ordinary’ reader. Dennis Gi≠ord observed of the success of the comics (begun in the late 1930s): ‘Perhaps because of this very fact of geography, Thomson’s comics still remain untouched by city sophistication and close to the hearts of British children everywhere’ (Gi≠ord 1971: 23). The firm used incentives to encourage artists and writers to settle in Dundee. Leo Baxendale, who became one of the most famous Beano artists (creating the ‘Bash Street Kids’) noted how the firm gave him the money for a mortgage at an exceptionally low rate, which encouraged employees like himself to live nearby. Baxendale drew an estimated 2,500 pages during his decade with the firm (Baxendale 1978: 68). Perhaps no one personified dedication and loyalty more than Dudley Dexter Watkins, who joined the firm in 1925, emigrating from Manchester. Watkins is perhaps best known as the creator of ‘Oor Wullie’, ‘The Broons’, and ‘Desperate Dan’, all still popular seventy years after their debuts. He drew, every day, for nearly forty-five years. On 20 August 1969, Watkins was found at his desk, dead from a heart attack, a half-finished Desperate Dan strip on his desk. John Leng was apparently also beloved by employees for his management style. An 1898 company publication testified to ‘the good-will’ and ‘most cordial’ relations between employer and employees: There is a veteran who has, as boy and man, been 55 years in the service, and looks as if he was equal to another decade of service. Several members of the sta≠ have served 45 years, others 40 and 30 years, and a large number have been upwards of 25 years in the o∞ce. The apprentices are almost without exception sons or other relatives of the employees. (John Leng & Co.: 18) Following the First World War, D. C. Thomson embraced the magazine market which was flourishing south of the border through publishers

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such as the Amalgamated Press. It did so while maintaining its newspaper empire, and acquiring existing titles like The Scots Magazine in 1927. With a few exceptions (a football weekly, Topical Times, was published from 1919 to 1940, using sports reporters from the firm’s newspapers), D. C. Thomson proceeded on two fronts, one old (papers for women), one new (papers for boys). Each exploited the demand for stories of romance, detection and adventure nurtured by ‘light’ popular fiction, the wireless and the cinema. The Thomson women’s papers may be divided into two categories: the blood-and-thunder papers and the romance papers. The bloodand-thunder papers had exotic titles which suited a sensational brand of fiction: Red Letter, Secrets, Flame and two oddly-named ones, Family Star (1934–77) and Red Star Weekly (1929–83). Conversely, the romance papers had a homely ring: People’s Friend, My Weekly, Weekly Welcome and Woman’s Way (1927–39). The longevity of most of these titles attests to the achievements of the firm in a very competitive and changing market. All the papers had in common the Thomson commitment to service features, including fashion patterns, gardening hints, recipes, picture competitions, crosswords, humor, a children’s page and the ubiquitous advice column. Here especially the knack of Thomson editors of embracing the reader and making her feel at home was most apparent. Woman’s Way, for example, featured ‘Secrets told to Leonora Eyles: When you come to a di∞cult crossroads in your life and don’t know which way to turn, please confide in me.’ Red Star Weekly answered reader’s queries directly: ‘Perplexed: If your husband is keeping you short of money, you should pay another visit to the probation o∞cer.’ The average women’s paper cost 2d, was 32 to 36 pages long and included between six and ten short stories and serials. The character of the fiction varied according to the class of publication. The blood-andthunder papers, for example, featured ‘daring’ stories about forbidden loves, domestic violence and crime, with titles like ‘Dangerous Woman’ and ‘Jealous Sister’. The romance papers, on the other hand, contained traditional, sentimental fiction, usually love stories with a little titillation: ‘Someone Interested’ and ‘A Stranger Steps In’. According to available sales figures (not supplied by D. C. Thomson, which has always kept these secret), the women’s papers were successful, and not simply in Scotland. The readership surveys conducted by Investigated Press Circulations in 1932 found that, in England and Wales Red Letter was the fourth most popular ‘Ladies Paper’ (so labelled by IPC) with an estimated 595,000 readers, or 1.25 per cent of the population. Red Letter readers were about equally divided between

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the middle and working classes. In Scotland, People’s Friend won hands down over all other weeklies, with an estimated 1,520,000 readers, or 24.1 per cent of the population. Next most popular in Scotland were My Weekly (203,000 readers; 3.2 per cent); Red Letter (184,000; 2.9); and Red Star Weekly (80,000; 1.3). Again, readership was divided among all classes. The most popular women’s magazine in Britain at the time was Woman’s Weekly, with 1.1 million readers. A 1939 Thomson advertisement gave the ‘Family Three’ (Family Star, Secrets and Red Letter) a combined circulation 600,000 copies weekly, and the ‘Feminine Five’ (Red Letter, Red Star Weekly, My Weekly, Woman’s Way and Woman’s Welcome) ‘Over 1,250,000 Copies Weekly’ – figures that were likely true. D. C. Thomson displayed an uncanny knack for satisfying readers with a product that they wanted to buy, week after week. The firm did not mind serving up sensations in women’s magazines, if they sold papers – and they did. The morals, however, were under all circumstances proper and correct, reflecting the proprietor’s paternalism and staunch Presbyterian faith. According to David Doig, who joined the firm in 1927 and became editor of Woman’s Way, Thomson editors were very strict indeed. Drinking and smoking were not allowed, nor was the mention of the unmarried man or the adulterous woman. Divorce was not permitted, nor was anything bad ever said about the mother in a story. ‘Crime does not pay’ was a common theme. The concern of both editor and writer, Doig said, was to tug at the reader’s heart strings: ‘You know if you have this very great emotional ending – which is the “lump-in-the-throat” bit – you are going to have a saleable story.’1 While Thomson shared the women’s paper market with such strong London-based competitors as Newnes-Pearson (Peg’s Paper, Home Notes) and the Amalgamated Press (Home Chat, Woman’s Weekly), they came to dominate the competition in the boys’ paper field until the 1950s. The Thomson boys’ weeklies, 2d each, were known by boys and the industry alike as the ‘Big 5’ papers, attesting to their popularity and dominance. The Big 5 papers were Adventure (1921–63); the Rover (1922–73); the Wizard (1922–78); the Skipper (1930–41) and the Hotspur (1933–81). The papers contained almost entirely fiction, six or seven stories with a prize competition and a joke page. Each title also published an annual for the Christmas trade, usually 128 pages and excellent sellers. The boys’ papers catered for an audience aged 8–14 1

David Doig was interviewed in 1986. He worked in turn for the Rover, the Evening Telegraph and Weekly Welcome. He retired in 1978 as general manager of all the adult magazines.

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from all classes, and there was a Big 5 paper for every day of the week. ‘We couldn’t a≠ord to buy them all – “Wizard”, “Adventure”, “Rover”, “Hotspur”, “Skipper” – but we managed to get hands on most of them by some complex form of barter’, George Mackay Brown recalled, adding that parents and teachers ‘disapproved’ (Brown 1988: 65–6). In a 1939 advertisement, the ‘Big 5’ papers were advertised as selling ‘Over a Million Copies Weekly’, which was probably true. While they were not the first boys’ papers on the market, they were decidedly di≠erent, with a fresh approach, combining creativity, spontaneity and imagination which took boys out of the school-story setting. Unlike the Amalgamated Press’s Gem (1907–39) and The Magnet (1908–40), which were exclusively school-story papers, the Big 5 papers had a dazzling array of adventures and inventions. There were boys who could disappear at will, consume wonder drugs and grow stronger, even defeat the Nazis single-handedly. There were plenty of adult role models, too. Adventure had Dixon Hawke, the top-class detective; Rover had CastIron Bill, a goalkeeper who never conceded a goal; Wizard had Lionheart Logan, a Canadian Mountie who always got his man. The editors of the boys’ papers concentrated on a number of popular subjects: ‘You couldn’t go wrong with football, or boxing, or racing, blood-and-thunder, adventure types. In those days King and Country was a great thing. Khyber Pass was a mysterious and dangerous place,’ said George Moonie, who joined the Rover in 1930 and was the first editor of the Beano.2 A 1934 issue of Rover included ‘Murk the Mauler, the Hurricane Zulu who’s happiest when he’s fighting’; ‘Captain Lawless, the Iron Spy, in a smashing complete yarn of Tibetan adventure’; ‘Wily Watkins, the 16-year-old Schoolmaster’; and ‘Tough Callahan, the British policeman doing special duty in the United States’. D. C. Thomson sustained the popularity of their publications by vigorously researching the readership and changing tastes. Several methods, some of them novel, were used to identify and cater to the readership. A Thomson innovation, for example, was the editorial page, featuring a snappy, inviting title and a warm, friendly article that not only made the reader feel at home but encouraged him to write in with information. The Wizard featured a page headed, ‘Step Right Up and Have a Chat with Your Editor!’ One issue of ‘the Wizard’ alone featured letters from Wigan, Cardi≠, Dover, Kingstown, Heysham, Barrow, Larne, She∞eld, Manchester, Nairn, Ealing, Cork, Wexford and Inverness. The editors of the women’s papers also promoted a warm 2

George Moonie was interviewed in 1986 and 1987. After the Second World War Moonie founded two story papers for girls, Judy and Diana. He retired in 1983.

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and friendly attitude in their columns. The first issue of Flame in 1935 asked its readers: ‘When you write, please tell me all about yourselves. I want every one of us to be real friends, and the more I know about you – who you are, what you do, and everything else – the sooner we shall all be able to get to know each other.’ Another Thomson novelty were the frequent, sometimes lucrative prize competitions and giveaways (‘pushes’) in each paper. Twiceyearly the Thomson publications were pushed: the push usually coincided with the start of a new serial, which would run for several weeks. If successful, a push could influence weekly sales by as many as 70,000 copies. Among the more bizarre giveaways in the boys’ papers, apart from collectible cards of famous footballers or cricketers, were the electric shock machines o≠ered with the first issue of Hotspur in 1933: ‘It’s a great prize, absolutely harmless and will give hours of fun. Just watch your pal’s face when you give him his first electric shock!’ The women’s papers, in addition to fashion patterns, recipes and cosmetics, gave away a large number of love charms, fortune-telling guides and gypsy rings. One issue of Red Letter in 1933 had two giveaways: ‘A Beautiful Art Picture of Greta Garbo’ and ‘Helga’s Dream Book of 1,000 Dreams: the Best Guide Possible to the Mystic World of Dreamland’. Some methods of market research were more direct. ‘Speering’ was a company policy to send sales representatives to the major cities, including London and Manchester, to stand outside school gates (with permission) and ask exiting children what they liked or disliked about a current paper or push. The publisher’s overall goal was to entertain, not to o≠end. According to Norman Fowler, who joined the firm in 1934 and became editor of the Wizard, a good editor at D. C. Thomson ‘will impose his ideas on the reader. The reader believes that this is the kind of story he wants to read. But really, the editor is saying, “This is the kind of story that I know you will want to read.” ’3 W. O. G. Lofts, in praising D. C. Thomson and the Big 5 papers, agreed: ‘The great success of all their papers is simply that they [the editors] were brilliant psychologists, as they seemed to know what exactly boys wanted to read and prepared their papers accordingly’ (The Spectator, 30 Jan. 1971: 169). In the 1930s, close attention to the market led D. C. Thomson to their next – and most successful – venture: the weekly comic paper. Little did anyone know that the Dandy (1937–), followed soon by the Beano (1938–), would secure the firm’s fortunes well into the next century. 3

Norman Fowler was interviewed in 1986. He retired that year as director of the girls’ papers.

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Figure 4.7 Boy reading Oor Wullie.

The Dandy, the Beano and The Broons Whether or not you have ever read a D. C. Thomson comic, chances are you have heard of one of the characters: Desperate Dan from the Dandy; Dennis the Menace from the Beano; Oor Wullie and the family Broon from their namesake Sunday Post strips. They remain popular, nearly seventy years after their debuts, as beloved by native Scots as they are south of the border and overseas. In 2004, a poll named Oor Wullie the top Scottish icon (besting William Wallace and Sean Connery). Dennis the Menace, with his spiky black hair, striped shirt and rebellious nature, is thought by some to have inspired the Punk movement. ‘Most of our humour is visual. That’s its success,’ said Euan Kerr, editor of the Beano since 1984. ‘With the best of artists, you wouldn’t need any words on the page and you can tell the story.’4 As an example, Kerr cited the Bash Street Kids, created by Leo Baxendale. A single panel depicting the school yard could contain 20–30 characters, each telling a di≠erent story. 4

Euan Kerr was interviewed in 2005.

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Coupled with first-rate artistic talent is a moral code for children that has never wavered. Albert Barnes, founding editor of the Dandy in 1937 (who remained so for forty-three years) summed up the philosophy of the D. C. Thomson comics: ‘There is never any real violence, only the cartoon kind to be found in Tom and Jerry where the victim always springs back unharmed. It gives children a chance to cock a harmless snook at authority, and sublimate their desires to kick against the traces’ (BBC news, 6 July 1999). Kerr expanded on this: Characters, although they are really naughty, they’re doing it for fun. They don’t think of the consequences; they accept the punishment, but will do the same thing next week. I’ll often say to the artist – put a smile on their face. They mustn’t be seen with a frown or portrayed as evil in any way. The Dandy, Beano, Oor Wullie and The Broons have always been characterdriven. ‘Right since the beginning the main characters have been way out in front,’ Kerr said: They are simple characters that can be updated. That’s the secret – they can live in the 2005 model as easily as in the 1950s. For any characters in a comic, I ask, ‘Can I think of ideas for this character in 20 years’ time?’ That’s the most important benchmark. Also, you’ve got parents and grandparents who love these and tend to buy them for their kids, so it is self perpetuating. The Thomson editors and artists have had an uncanny knack for creating memorable characters. Desperate Dan, drawn by Dudley Dexter Watkins (who also drew Oor Wullie and The Broons), has appeared since the first edition. The larger-than-life cowboy, resident of Cactusville, lives for his meal of cow pie (complete with protruding horns and tail) and his smoke. Dennis the Menace, ‘the wildest boy in the world’, lived in the city – and lived up to his name as the quintessential juvenile delinquent, a popular anti-hero. Concessions have been made over the years to political correctness and changing styles. Corporal punishment, smoking and racial stereotypes are now taboo, and Desperate Dan’s cow pie has disappeared, a victim of mad cow disease. ‘It does limit us in a way, but we’re also perhaps slightly ruder than in the old days. A bit more bodily functions – we know that that’s what kids laugh at now,’ Kerr said. Oor Wullie and The Broons are another matter altogether. These sweetnatured comics are unique slices of Scottish life, written in Scots dialect and created by an artist from Manchester. Oor Wullie, sitting atop his ‘wee zinc pail’, is a classic D. C. Thomson truant, rather like Dennis the Menace, only

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with his family present. ‘Wha keeps his mother in a steer? Wha nearly drives his father queer? Wha throws the whole town oot o’ gear? – Oor Wullie!’ The Broons live at No. 10 Glebe Street: Maw, Paw, and their eight o≠spring, from Granpaw to the bairn, who carry on many conversations at the same time. Alan Digby, who joined D. C. Thomson in 1971 and now oversees the two strips in their annual format, attributed the enduring appeal of the strips both at home and abroad to their use of the vernacular: ‘In the 1950s, when you listened to TV it was very much BBC English. To have something in your own language, someone speaking the same as you, was great,’ he said.5 Clearly, D.C. Thomson has always spoken the language of success, whether the Scots dialect or a mischievous sense of fun. Joseph McAleer

Comics were not a novelty. The first popular one was an Amalgamated Press invention: Comic Cuts (1890–1953). In 1936, Odhams Press, capitalising on the popularity of the cinema, launched Mickey Mouse Weekly, the first colour comic printed by photogravure. For many years, D. C. Thomson tested the market with comic strip fillers in the ‘Big 5’ and women’s papers: ‘Flip and Flop’, ‘the Artful Acrobats’ and ‘Nosey Parker, Our Prize Busy-Body’ in Rover; ‘Nutty and Sam in the South Sea Islands’ in Red Letter. In 1936, ‘Oor Wullie’ and ‘The Broons’, with characters who spoke a thick Scots dialect, made their debut in the Sunday Post. According to Moonie, Thomson research indicated the time was ripe for an experiment: An organisation like D. C. Thomson has got feelers all over the country. We’ve got circulation people with an idea of what’s going on elsewhere, what’s selling at the time, what is really on in the market. So if they felt that a comic was a good thing, they would certainly send the news back to headquarters. With the Dandy, D. C. Thomson drew upon the established formula of the Big 5 papers in size and content, but skewed to a younger reader with a mix of picture stories and prose stories. From the beginning, as in the Big 5, characters were larger than life and showcased. First-run characters included Korky the Kat, Desperate Dan, Hungry Horace and Keyhole Kate. The first Dandy had a giveaway: ‘The Great Express Whistler, 8 di≠erent engine whistles in 1’. The Beano, with a whole new cast of characters, including ‘Big Eggo,’ the awkward ostrich and ‘Lord 5

Alan Digby was interviewed in 2005. He was also the editor of the Beezer comic.

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Snooty and his Pals’, followed the Dandy’s success the next year. The name, like ‘dandy’, was carefully chosen, Moonie said: ‘Beano is a feast of fun. The Beano was meant to be a feast of reading. 28 pages and remarkably cheap’. The comics, like all Thomson publications, were geared toward a national audience, as Moonie noted: They were twin papers; almost certainly people bought both. We really had to gear the humour to the English market because that’s where the large percentage of readership lay. It was a universal humour, even for Scottish readers – what they’d call in these days ‘Euro’. As for the age of the readers, D. C. Thomson targeted a younger group, 7–11, which would then graduate to the Big 5, which extended to age 15. And there were adult readers. ‘The sta≠ was aged up to 30, they found it funny, so why wouldn’t adults? If the parents picked it up and read it and liked it that was good, that established the paper in the home,’ Moonie said. The comics came into their own during the Second World War, when the Nazis and Fascists were fair game. In 1940, Lord Snooty captured a German U-Boat by dressing up as Hitler and tricking the sailors that Germany had won the war. ‘Musso the Wop’ was the butt of jokes in the Beano. Desperate Dan could punch Hitler out of Britain, landing him back in Germany. ‘The troops had them,’ Moonie said. ‘You’ve got to bring these people down in some way. That’s propaganda, but very useful propaganda.’ In Scotland, as in the rest of Britain, wartime shortages intensified demand for Thomson publications and consolidated the firm’s hold on the market. By 1950 D. C. Thomson was the largest publisher of periodicals and magazines outside London, with thirty titles, as compared with the London-based Amalgamated Press’ seventy papers. But the situation for the second half of the century would be very di≠erent for the firm. Most of the Thomson publications declined in popularity. The exceptions were the Dandy and Beano, which went from strength to strength (in the 1950s, the circulation of the Dandy was, the firm claimed, a staggering 2 million) and a handful of women’s papers, including that old stalwart, the People’s Friend. There were several reasons for the decline. First and foremost was the growth of television, which spurred a new kind of boys’ paper: the picture-story paper. In 1950, the Eagle comic landed from the proprietors of the Picture Post, and set a new artistic benchmark with the adventures of ‘Dan Dare’. Eagle was followed by Girl and Swift.

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‘Children’s reading in school was becoming a lot more picturised,’ recalled Jack Mackersie, who engineered the redesign of Hotspur into a picture-story paper in 1959. ‘They were using a lot more graphics, a new type of education. Whether it was good or not I don’t know. We gave a child two hours of good hard reading, whereas with a picturestory paper they’re through in twenty minutes. You’ve only got balloons to read.’6 Beginning with the New Hotspur, all of the Big 5 papers were transitioned to picture-story papers, or comics, by the 1960s. ‘Our circulation dropped tremendously overnight literally because we had gone from prose to picture stories,’ Mackersie recalled. ‘Not only the readers themselves wrote in, but the readers’ parents. They had been readers themselves, and had the feeling that the children were being deprived of reading.’ As the market for their boys’ papers declined, D. C. Thomson found new success in story papers for girls, beginning with Bunty in 1958. ‘This was a question of bringing changes, of finding a new market, new to us,’ recalled Moonie. Thomson’s lean and flexible workforce meant that experimentation could take place, quickly, in bringing a new paper to market. In 1964, Jackie made its debut, becoming one of the firm’s best sellers for girls. The title was evocative of the chic former First Lady of the United States Jacqueline Kennedy. The comics, on the other hand, experienced a golden age until the end of the century, demonstrating the eternal appeal of a good laugh. ‘By 1953 . . . the postwar baby bulge had grown to come of reading age: there was a new generation, a new market, to be seized and held; a great prize to be taken,’ recalled Leo Baxendale, who created a new generation of Beano characters: Little Plum (1953), Minnie the Minx (1953) and the Bash Street Kids (1954) (Baxendale: 9). The Beano was blessed with a succession of gifted artists, including David Law, who introduced Dennis the Menace, the ‘World’s Wildest Boy’ in 1951.

Leo Baxendale (1930–) and Alan Grant (1949–) This short essay outlines the careers to date of an artist born in England, Leo Baxendale, the highlights of whose output lie in his work for Scottishbased comics; and a writer born in Scotland, Alan Grant, the highlights of whose output lie in his work for London and US-based comics. The former began a career as a commercial artist on the Lancashire Evening Post drawing illustrations for advertisers and the occasional cartoon. A chance 6

Jack Mackersie was interviewed in 1986 and 1987.

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reading in 1952 of a younger brother’s Beano, and in particular Dennis the Menace drawn by David Law, provided the moment of epiphany that led him to o≠er his services to D. C. Thomson. The novice artist was not given the immediate autonomy he wished but handed responsibility for two rather dated characters Oscar Krank and Chopstick Charlie Choo. This did not satisfy him and he attempted to persuade R. D. Low, the managing director of D. C. Thomson, to allow him to run with his own ideas. These failed until he invented the character of Little Plum in 1953, combining the then very popular genre of the Western with the innocence and deviousness of the roguish boys typical of the Thomson stable. Other characters followed. Minnie the Minx was developed as a response to a request from George Moonie (see McAleer above) for a female Dennis the Menace in the Beano. A similar character had already been created by David Law for the Topper in the lanky shape of Beryl the Peril. Baxendale di≠erentiated Minnie from her rival by coupling brashness and ambition; he rejected Moonie’s desire to make the character more working class by retaining a suburban setting and a white-collar father. Minnie the Minx first appeared in the Beano in December 1953. However, the strongest set of characters developed by Baxendale for Thomson was the Bash Street Kids. This grew out of an earlier rejected idea; the di≠erence now was that he had proved himself with Little Plum and Minnie. George Moonie himself travelled down to Preston to persuade Baxendale to create the new story and characters. Its initial title was ‘When the Bell Rings’ but after a couple of years it became the more familiar ‘Bash Street Kids’. The concept of the gang of school children was not in itself novel since at least Kipling’s Stalky & Co. (1899) but the exuberant and anarchic misfits of Bash Street owed more to the girls of St Trinian’s by Ronald Searle, who first appeared in Hurrah for St Trinian’s in 1948 with the first film version, The Belles of St Trinian’s, coming out in 1954. Where Baxendale’s creations, also appearing in 1954, di≠ered from Searle’s (and indeed Kipling’s) was in their clear urban, working-class context. The Bash Street Kids have had a remarkable longevity over the past fifty years, remaining consistently successful over that period. Circulation of the Beano rose from 400,000 in 1953 to 2 million in 1958. The income Baxendale derived from these three strips was £10 per week: £6 for the Bash Street Kids and £2 each for the shorter Little Plum and Minnie the Minx. This was a reasonable wage at the time, particularly for pursuing a craft he enjoyed, and did not overstretch him. He added the Three Bears to his portfolio of creations appearing regularly in the Beano. However, Baxendale left the Beano in 1962 and D. C. Thomson altogether in 1964. He moved initially to Odhams for Wham! and then to Fleetway (IPC Magazines). His path crossed Thomson’s again in 1980 when he took the company to court to

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reclaim the copyright he had naively signed away. D. C. Thomson made a settlement in 1987. Such clashes of interest were common within an industry that still operated by buying copyright outright, when it could, to optimise the publisher’s income from forms of republication and exploitation of subsidiary rights. Alan Grant’s career also contained such conflicts. Grant, brought up in a working-class community outside Edinburgh, read as a child the full D. C. Thomson range including the girls’ comics such as Bunty and Judy. He also devoured the tales of superheroes published by Thomson, such as Superman and Batman, and then the innovative Marvel comics written by Stan Lee, such as the Fantastic Four and the X-Men. This intensive reading provided the background for his later work but first he had to learn the discipline of writing. His apprenticeship was served at D. C. Thomson, whom he joined in 1968 on a salary of £9 per week, not writing comics but sub-editing in the general fiction department. This included reducing a 75,000-word novel to 7,500 for serialisation in the Evening Telegraph. The Thomson experience prepared him for writing ‘true life romances’ (sic) for a range of IPC magazines in London; these stories provided a gripping, if at times farfetched, first-person narrative told from a woman’s point of view. They also paid £45 per week. However, an abortive return to full-time education resulted in a period of unemployment from which he was rescued by John Wagner, a former colleague at D. C. Thomson. Wagner had over-committed himself and needed a collaborator to work on the European franchise of Tarzan. Grant wrote Tarzan comic strips for two years before joining the editorial team of what became 2000AD. There he was responsible not only for writing a large number of stories but also for o≠ering their first opportunities to Alan Moore, Grant Morrison and Mark Millar, now among the most prominent comic writers in the world. The most significant work of Grant’s at 2000AD, on the other hand, was on Judge Dredd, co-written with John Wagner. The collaboration was so prolific that the partnership had to use a number of pseudonyms not only for 2000AD stories but also for those written for Eagle, Scream, Roy of the Rovers and a number of other IPC titles. All their work was bought outright and they derived no benefit from republication or, in the case of Judge Dredd, from film adaptation. Grant and Wagner had moved into American comics writing Batman for D. C., and inventing the villain(s) Scarface and the Ventriloquist, before the amicable break-up of their partnership. The ‘divorce settlement’ resulted in Grant continuing to write for over ten years the Batman stories on his own, including one that gave Bruce Wayne Scottish ancestry and contained battles at Edinburgh Castle, the Forth Rail Bridge and Rosslyn Chapel. Grant worked widely for Dark Horse, D. C. and Marvel before returning to Scotland in 1989, both for

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setting and for publisher, with The Bogie Man, and its sequels, for Fatman Press. Its sales of over 30,000 made it the bestselling independent British comic. Grant and his wife also established the Moniaive Comics Festival and its success has been a tribute to his global reputation as a writer of comics. Alistair McCleery

New comic titles appeared often in the 1950s and 1960s, and sharing of sta≠s was common: Topper, Beezer, Judy, Cherie, Victor, Bimbo, Diana, Hornet, Sparky, Mandy, Twinkle. As publishing houses merged and consolidated south of the border (the old Amalgamated Press became Fleetway, then IPC), D. C. Thomson remained independent and open to diversification. The 1970s saw the first of D. C. Thomson’s ‘specialist’ papers for boys: Warlord (war stories); Bullet (action stories); Crunch (space-age stories); Scoop (sport stories). Prepared like comic books but with a higher violence quotient, these recycled and updated stories from the Big 5 papers. In those days of proliferation of titles, survival depended upon sales, and the magic circulation number was a relatively low 100,000 copies. ‘If sales dropped to 100,000, a comic would be sacked,’ said Euan Kerr, who joined the firm in 1969 and rose to be editor of the Beano. ‘Today, that’s a big result.’7 The continuing impact of television could be seen in the 1980s, which brought the first real changes to the firm’s flagships. In 1985, the Dandy absorbed another comic, Nutty, welcoming a new popular television character, ‘Bananaman’. Commercial advertising, once banned to shield young readers, was introduced, adding a new source of revenue. Merchandising of the characters began, with Dennis the Menace Tshirts and figurines. In 1988, after fifty years of letterpress printing, the comics were transitioned to gravure printing. A 1993 survey of readers brought the all-colour comic format. On 10 July 1999, with issue number 3,007, the Dandy entered the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s longest running comic, succeeding Comic Cuts. ‘Sales wise, a lot depends now on the gift,’ Kerr said. ‘We hope it’s the content, but nowadays whichever comic has the best gift, sells the best. Loyalty is another factor. The Beano has a huge loyalty factor. We sell 50 percent more Annuals to grownups.’ Apart from the People’s Friend, which has become more and more a niche publication, the Thomson women’s papers had a tougher time as century’s end neared. London-based titles were technically superior and printed in colour, including the two most popular, Woman and 7

Euan Kerr was interviewed in 2005.

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Woman’s Own. As a non-union house, D. C. Thomson had to train themselves on the new gravure technology, a lengthy, though in the long run successful, process. ‘We didn’t start gravure until 1958. We had to teach ourselves a lot, because we’re not union, so we couldn’t bring in experienced people who were union,’ recalled Maurice Paterson, who joined the firm in 1940, worked on Secrets, and became editor of the redesigned My Weekly in 1960.8 ‘My Weekly was the first magazine to be put on gravure because it was down below the 100,000 circulation mark in 1961,’ Paterson continued. ‘It was picked to go on gravure because it looked like it was going to fail anyway, so it didn’t matter if it was a disaster.’ It was not. My Weekly climbed back to prosperity, thanks also to Paterson’s push for better, more realistic fiction. ‘Before the war, in serials your heroine always turned out to be some beautiful girl, about 20 or 22, who’d never been kissed. It was so ludicrous. I thought, “Why don’t we have a middle-aged heroine, to win the reader’s sympathy?” ’ Paterson overcame the initial resistance to change from his chairman, Harold Thomson, who would read the first instalment of all the major serials. After several rejections (including a story about an upper-class couple – ‘It was dealing with wealthy people, and he didn’t think that was right’), Thomson accepted one about a woman coping with cancer. ‘I put that in, and I got 55,000 letters. Women were crying their eyes out over this story. Stories can have a strong e≠ect upon people. I began to introduce more and more realism,’ Paterson recalled. Future stories dealt with lost babies, or mixed marriages. He gauged success by one method only: ‘You judge them on your circulation figures.’ Today, women’s magazines are known for their true-life stories and lifestyle services. In 1986, D. C. Thomson, described by the industry as ‘a wellestablished Scottish company rooted in tradition’, was still holding its own among the women’s magazines. Of the top ten titles monitored by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, Thomson’s landed numbers seven and eight: My Weekly, 696,279; and People’s Friend, 652,902. At the top of the list was Radio Times at 3 million; the top women’s magazine, Woman’s Weekly, was third at 1.4 million (Arnott-Job: 30). But by 1999, circulations had declined across the board. People’s Friend posted 412,570; My Weekly, 336,329. The top women’s magazine, Woman, stood at 670,241 (Dunn: 15). New celebrity-driven titles like Now, OK! and Hello posted the biggest gains. 8

Maurice Paterson was interviewed in 1986 and 1987. He retired in 1987 as managing editor of the women’s magazines.

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Why the decline? Maurice Paterson’s analysis in 1986 may have been prophetic: The future of entertaining the public has got a big question mark on it. By and large, the housewife in particular is going o≠ reading. In a way the magazine industry brought it on itself, because by starting picture-story comics for kids of, say, 10–16, as they get older, lo and behold they’re not used to reading books or text magazines. So they sit and watch the box. At the close of the century, D. C. Thomson, despite challenges to many of its titles, remained a profitable and solid concern, perhaps the envy of its competitors. It maintained its independence and kept overheads low, which boosted profits. In 1984, the firm led a field of thirty British magazine publishers in having the highest pre-tax profits, £15.9m, on turnover of £71.8m. By 2002, these numbers had risen to £40.3m and £158.6m, respectively (Dunn: 43). The firm’s success set a business example for the industry: ‘Small publishing companies can a≠ord to be much more flexible than large companies. They are able to cut costs more easily when required . . . They are likely to be financially committed to the venture and therefore willing to work much harder’ (Arnott-Job: 19). One thing is for certain: as long as D. C. Thomson remains familyowned and true to its tradition and core values, it will continue to plough its own solitary, but profitable, furrow – to the envy of the publishing industry both in Britain and overseas.

Section 5

AUTHORS AND READERS Overview

he nineteenth century, covered in the previous volume in this series, witnessed the gradual assertion of authors’ rights and the acquisition of social status for professional writers. Two factors can be identified as contributing to these changes: the increasing demand for words to fill the pages of newspapers and magazines and the shelves of the circulating and other libraries; and the emergence of the author as celebrity from Scott onwards. The Scottish publishing industry cannily invested in new authors as it carried on its lucrative trade in reprints; and it balanced its fiction lists with steadily selling text books in science, law and theology, as detailed in Section 4 above. Edinburgh itself contained the printers and booksellers necessary to sustain this publishing output but it competed with London for the authors who provided its raw material, even those nurtured in Scotland and in its reviews. Scott provided a role model for those wishing to remain in Scotland although his initial volumes of poetry, Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802–3) and The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), were largely handled by London-based booksellers. This changed with Marmion (1808) undertaken by Constable and The Lady of the Lake (1810) by John Ballantyne, in which Scott was himself a secret partner. The Scott Monument in Princes Street in Edinburgh represents, all the way up to its 200-foot top, an iconic statement of Scott’s celebrity status. That status was tied up with the author’s ability to command greater earnings. Three methods of rewarding the author were in common use throughout the nineteenth century as subscription fell into general disuse. Writers could share the risk of publication with the publisher in return for half the profits after costs but often encountered disreputable partners who inflated costs to diminish profits. Secondly, writers could sell copyright in their work outright to the publisher, receiving only the

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initial fixed sum regardless of how successful the publication proved to be. Thirdly, the copyright could be leased to the publisher for an agreed period or number of editions after which it reverted to the author. This eventually merged from the 1880s with the royalty system that o≠ered writers a percentage of the net income or the retail price on a sliding scale of the number of copies sold. Celebrity authors could build up a substantial income from their work if they retained copyright and, increasingly from the late nineteenth century, all the subsidiary rights including serialisation and adaptation for theatre and cinema. R. M. Ballantyne, an outlying member of the Ballantyne family, embodied in his career the changes that took place. The letters and sketches he had sent home while working in Canada for the Hudson’s Bay Company were published in 1847 through subscription with Blackwood handling the distribution. Its success led Ballantyne to accept Blackwood’s proposal to put out another edition on the halfprofits system but the market had been saturated and sales were very slow. When Thomas Nelson & Sons o≠ered to buy its copyright outright in 1854, Ballantyne accepted this too with alacrity. Nelson’s repackaged the book and sold it successfully through several reprints. Ballantyne also sold Nelsons the copyright in the fictionalised version of his experiences The Young Fur Traders (1856) and in the bestselling The Coral Island (1858). The National Library of Scotland holds over sixty editions, not including translations, of The Coral Island. Such was the success of these titles that Ballantyne tried to reclaim his copyright from Nelsons – in vain. He moved to Routledge who gave him a royalty on sales of subsequent books in which he retained copyright. In 1863 he found an amicable publisher in James Nisbet & Company with whom he remained until his death in 1894. Celebrity status and financial success also implied the growth of a significant reading public. During the nineteenth century, the practice of extensive rather than intensive reading was consolidated in Scotland. The Old Statistical Account (1790s) and its successor the New Statistical Account (1840) represent fertile sources of qualitative data for reading in Scotland in the earlier part of the century – the quantitative data is not so robust. The evidence shows not only that people were reading but that they were talking about what they read. Subscription libraries were being created, including those by various workers’ groups, while readers actively participated in the print economy by writing letters to newspapers and entering essay and verse competitions. The Ladies Edinburgh Debating Society crosses from the nineteenth into the twentieth century (and from the previous volume to this one) until its dissolution in 1936.

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In this section, Andrew Nash o≠ers a contextual survey of the changing nature of the literary marketplace and the practice of authorship from 1880 to 2000 and this is supplemented by two detailed case studies of prominent writers, Annie S. Swan and Neil M. Gunn, while a case study of Joyce Holms provides a portrait of a representative rather than a canonical writer. Simon Ward examines the unchanging need for authors to earn a living while showing the di≠erent means through which they have tried to satisfy that need against the background of a changing publishing industry and its practices. A major index of that change was the rise of the literary agent at the end of the nineteenth century to a position where he or she has become an indispensable component of the publishing process. The figure of Giles Gordon provided continuity within a tradition that, as Simon Ward outlines, began with another Scotsman A. P. Watt. The data from the 2001 survey of writers presents a profile of the state of authorship at the end of the twentieth century. David Finkelstein’s survey of readers and reading is enhanced by a number of detailed studies: the Ladies Edinburgh Debating Society acts as a bridge, as noted above, between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; Ralph Glasser made the intellectual and social journey from the Gorbals to Oxford through a devotion to the printed word; a snapshot of children’s reading habits and practices in Scotland in 1989 reveals a relatively bleak situation before the Harry Potter phenomenon began to mitigate it from 1997 onwards; and the section closes with the Edinburgh International Book Festival through which Scotland began again to look outwards to an international audience for its own writers and to international authors for its readers.

Authors in the Literary Marketplace Andrew Nash 1880–1914 The period immediately after 1880 witnessed some important changes in the literary market and the practice of authorship: the decline of the three-volume novel, the diversification of the serial market, the rise of the literary agent, the emergence of the bestseller and the consolidation of the royalty system, all took place against a background of changes that signalled the increasing professionalisation of authorship and the growing split between high and low culture. The three-volume novel, which had dictated the form of the fiction market for most of the century, all but disappeared in 1894 when the subscription libraries revised the terms upon which they were willing to purchase volumes of fiction (Griest). The increasing number of novels published and the rapid issue of cheap reprints had led to a saturation of the market and made the form uneconomical. The e≠ects on authorship can be glimpsed in the fate of Sarah Tytler (Henrietta Keddie (1827–1914)), a prolific novelist whose career spans the Victorian and Edwardian periods. Tytler achieved popularity with novels such as St Mungo’s City (1884), set in Glasgow, and Logie Town (1887), set in her native Cupar. For these and other novels of the period she was paid moderate but healthy sums, selling the copyright of Beauty and the Beast (1884), for example, for £200. The three-volume system gave publishers a guaranteed market, enabling authors like Tytler to make a solid, if unspectacular, living from writing novels. When the system disappeared, the easy market went with it. After 1894 Tytler’s receipts from volume publication diminished dramatically – she was paid just £40 for the one-volume historical novel The MacDonald Lass (1895). 388

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New opportunities for the novelist were provided by changes in the serial market with the emergence of cheaper magazines and the expansion of newspapers. Tytler, however, found it di∞cult to respond to the spirit of the age. Depressed by the poor sales of The Witch Wife (1897), she bemoaned the ‘lack of discrimination in the mass of readers [which] leaves little chance for books which do not tickle curiosity by being wildly eccentric in an e≠ort to be original’.1 The Glasgow Weekly Herald paid in the region of £40 to £50 for The MacDonald Lass – a tiny sum compared to those paid to other authors.2 In later years Tytler’s agent found it di∞cult to secure serial openings for her works at all and at the turn of the century she was forced to admit to her publisher ‘that the times in which we live and the trend of public taste are against me’.3 In the Edwardian period she received as little as £30 for some of her novels. Tytler’s failure to respond to changes in taste was in part a failure to tap into what Peter Keating has called ‘the relentless fragmentation and categorisation of fiction’ in the last two decades of the century. The number of new novels published in the period increased fourfold as production costs decreased. The impulse towards cheaper and more popular formats for books contributed in part to the emergence of numerous sub-genres, such as science fiction, ghost stories, detective fiction and adventure romance. These developments were facilitated by the ‘proliferation of magazines, newspapers and periodicals directed at very clearly defined groups of readers’ (Keating: 340). Arthur Conan Doyle found his literary career moulded by the success of his detective stories in the Strand Magazine (see McDonald 1997). Doyle harboured aspirations in other areas but the market determined that he should follow one path. Sherlock Holmes had to be resurrected from his death in ‘The Final Problem’ in 1893 and Doyle continued to write detective stories, in between other forms and genres, with The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes appearing in 1927, three years before his death. One writer who not only took advantage of the state of the market but who found in it his artistic voice was Robert Louis Stevenson. Stevenson’s early publications made him little money. He received only £50 for the copyright of New Arabian Nights (1882), a collection of stories issued in two volumes. Some of these stories had been published in distinguished literary magazines, such as the Cornhill, Temple Bar, Macmillan’s and Longman’s, but Stevenson made little from such 1 2

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Henrietta Keddie to Chatto & Windus, 24 January 1898 (Reading University Library). Figure estimated by A. S. Watt in a letter to Chatto & Windus, 9 April 1894 (Reading University Library). For comparisons see the data recorded in Law. Henrietta Keddie to Chatto & Windus, 23 February 1900 (Reading University Library).

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periodical contributions. His early travel books and volumes of essays were equally unremunerative. The critical moment in his career as a professional author is the publication of Treasure Island (1883). Paid by the page for the story in Young Folks, Stevenson received £37 7s 6d for serialisation. More significantly, for the volume rights Cassell paid an advance of £100 – much in excess of what Stevenson was expecting – and published the book in one volume priced at 6s. The recognition that he had tapped into a new, lucrative audience enabled Stevenson to discover his identity as an author. Once he had accepted that ‘all the books that Fanny, my father, Colvin and the wiseacres think too bad to print are the very ones that bring me praise and pudding’ he gained the selfassurance he needed to break out fully on his own path (Stevenson, Letters IV: 219). The direction of that path entailed a ready embrace of the market as a necessary aspect of authorship. Large sales and immense popularity came with the publication of the shilling shocker Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886). On the back of that success, Stevenson made his second visit to America where he received o≠ers of $10,000 (approximately £2,000) for a series of weekly essays in the New York World (which he declined), $8,000 by McClure for the serial right of his next story and $3,500 by Scribner’s for twelve monthly essays. These large sums indicate the expansion of the literary market in America, chiefly through newspaper syndication. Stevenson was not alone in profiting. Scribner’s paid J. M. Barrie $7,500 for the right to serialise Sentimental Tommy (1896), far in excess of what a British magazine could a≠ord. The liberation of the American market for British authors was the result of the harmonisation of copyright. Prior to the Chace Act of 1891, books by British authors could be printed in America without authorisation or payment. Numerous editions of J. M. Barrie’s uncollected journalism, unsanctioned by the author and never published in Britain, circulated widely across America, with the result that this aspect of Barrie’s writing became more widely known in America than in Britain. The issue of international copyright protection was one of the driving forces behind the establishment of the Society of Authors in 1884 (Bonham-Carter 1978). More than any other event, the founding of the society signalled the increasing professionalisation of authorship. An o∞cial monthly journal, The Author, was launched in 1890 and numerous advice books were published, educating authors in how to deal with publishers and dispose of – or rather retain – their literary property. The society worked to establish greater regulation of author contracts, an aspect of authorship a≠ected also by the emergence of the literary agent. A. P. Watt, the pioneering professional agent, began his career by

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providing assistance to his friend George MacDonald, placing his work with publishers and editors and taking a commission on receipts. The emergence of agents contributed to the consolidation of royalties as the standard method by which authors were paid for their work. Before the end of the century, there were three other typical methods of payment. Most common was the half-profits system, where a publisher invested money in the production of a book and divided any profits with the author. The method was unsatisfactory from both perspectives. Publishers took all the risk but authors could lose out if costs were artificially inflated. A variation of this method was the system of publishing on commission, where an author would pay a proportion of the production costs. J. M. Barrie contributed £30 towards the costs of his first published book Better Dead (1887) and never recouped the investment. The third method was to lease the copyright or to sell it outright. The rights in a book might be sold for a stated length of time, at the expiration of which copyright would revert to the author. Alternatively, a publisher could purchase a book outright, thus gaining control over subsidiary rights and all future proceeds from the book. With changes in copyright law, and the growing market for cheap reprints at the end of the nineteenth century, this could often turn out to be a fruitful investment, as it proved for Ward, Lock who purchased the copyright of Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet (1888) for just £25. The decline of the three-volume novel made it more di∞cult for the average novelist to make a living from literature. Increasingly writers looked to other professions and ways of making money to support the limited income available from authorship. Several authors were involved in editing and publishing. John Buchan is discussed elsewhere. George Douglas Brown became sub-editor of Sandow’s Magazine, where several of his stories were published, and literary advisor to the firm of John Macqueen, which issued The House with the Green Shutters (1901). Andrew Lang acquired a more exalted position in the editorial world. He became literary advisor to Longmans and established his reputation as a critic by writing leaders for the Daily News and a monthly column for Longman’s Magazine, ‘At the Sign of the Ship’. The latter established him as one of the most famous and notorious critics of the day. In the words of Frank Swinnerton: ‘he wrote everywhere . . . upon almost every subject in the world’ (Swinnerton: 63). Some authors were in the happy position of not having to seek additional or alternative employment to support their work. In the first three decades of the twentieth century, J. M. Barrie became one of the wealthiest authors of the age, although the bulk of that wealth came not

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from sales of books but from the theatre. In his twenties Barrie had devoted his energies to journalism, which had long been the profession to which authors looked for additional income. However, with the shifts in cultural value brought about by the impact of the New Journalism in the 1890s, a stigma attached itself to the literary author as journalist. Robert Louis Stevenson qualified his assessment of Barrie’s ‘genius’ with the phrase: ‘there’s a journalist at his elbow, there’s the risk’ (Stevenson, Letters VII: 451). Attitudes towards journalism were a≠ected by the emerging split between high and low culture, the legacy, in part, of educational reforms and the widening of the reading public (Altick). Modernist authors would later look upon the authorjournalist as the very worst type of writer – an artist communing with the masses (Carey 1992). In the early decades of the twentieth century, however, writers like Neil Munro were able to pursue the two professions profitably. The advent of a new mass culture brought the relationship between writer and audience into sharper focus. The decline of the three-volume novel coincided with the invention of the term ‘bestseller’ and the emergence of the bestselling author as a cultural phenomenon (Bassett). Ian Maclaren and S. R. Crockett, who achieved enormous sales with their ‘Kailyard’ tales of Scottish rural life in the 1890s, illustrate this emerging aspect of authorship. Both writers acquired celebrity status and news of their public appearances and movements filled the gossip columns of the literary papers (Nash 2004). Both also responded to the American innovation of the personal interview, which was a regular feature of British magazines in the 1890s. In such articles there was little discussion of the writers’ books but plenty of background information about their lifestyle together with pictures of their homes, desks, libraries and gardens. The contemporary cultural interest was vested as much in the authors’ personalities as their books, as the diversifying magazine market brought new strategies of authorial presentation.

1914–45 The years immediately after the First World War were notable for a further intensification of popular reading and publishing, as higher production costs and lower profit margins forced publishers to ‘accelerate the movement towards cheaper-priced books, and to accommodate more closely the tastes of the lower-middle and working classes’ (McAleer: 51). The spread of public and commercial libraries and the increased sales of books in newsagents and general stores, such as Woolworths, ensured that rising production levels continued unabated

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Figure 5.1 Home of Annie S. Swan.

by the strikes of 1926 and the slump of the 1930s. Fiction increasingly came to be marketed in the form of branded goods and in series such as Hodder & Stoughton’s 2s ‘Yellow Jackets’. When Q. D. Leavis anatomised the state of literary culture in her book Fiction and the Reading Public (1932), she stratified the market into three levels: ‘lowbrow’ culture, fuelled by cheap magazines and public libraries; ‘middlebrow’ culture, served by the ‘strict moral censorship’ of the subscription libraries and the new phenomenon of book clubs; and the realm of serious literature, typified by authors who are now considered ‘highbrow’ or modernist. A typical lowbrow writer was Annie Swan, discussed in a case study below. A typical ‘middlebrow’ author was A. J. Cronin whose books were bought in huge numbers by subscription libraries. Cronin’s first novel, Hatter’s Castle (1931), was an instant bestseller and allowed him to give up the medical profession overnight. Aided by the brilliant advertising campaign of Victor Gollancz – one of the most innovative publishers of the period – The Citadel (1937) sold over 40,000 copies in nine days – a bookselling record – and 100,000 copies in ten weeks. It also broke records at Harrods Library, ‘exceeding by 500 copies the purchase of any one title’ (qtd in Hodges: 72).

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Annie S. Swan (1859–1943) The career of Annie S. Swan illustrates the shifting status of the author in the marketplace, and the fracturing of the ‘popular and ‘literary’ markets, in the period 1880–1930. Swan began her career writing children’s stories. Her first novel, Ups and Downs (1878), was issued in London ‘by an obscure, and possibly rather shady, firm called The Charing Cross Publishing Company’ (Swan: 33–4). Published on the half-profits system, Swan contributed £50 to the production and lost the money. Success and reputation did not come until Aldersyde was published by the Edinburgh firm of Oliphant & Co. in 1883. The novel was positively received and discussed in reviews like the Athenaeum. Swan published numerous books through Oliphant & Co., alternating between the juvenile and adult markets. Several of these had strongly regional settings and can be seen as forerunners of the Kailyard. Aldersyde, Swan claimed, was her only bestseller. She received £50 for the copyright; for Carlowrie £75 and for The Gates of Eden (1886) £100. For the 1880s these are moderate sums, especially as Swan was parting with all the rights in her work. At the same time she was writing serial stories for the Dundee newspapers the People’s Friend and the People’s Journal, having won second prize in a Christmas story competition in the latter. Her work on the Friend continued into the new century and gave her a steady income. Her first serial for the Friend, Wrongs Righted (1881), was later published in book form by Oliphant & Co. Nevertheless, in her autobiography Swan recorded that her public was ‘mainly a serial one’. She considered her stories for the Friend the mainstay of her writing life. She found serial stories suited her because there were ‘no discursive meditations in a serial – the story is the thing’ – and considered that serials reached a wider public, one that ‘cannot a≠ord, or which has never been educated to buy books’ (283). Swan must not be seen as a professional author forced into hackwork by the vagaries of existence. Her husband was a doctor and she was financially secure throughout her life – her family had homes in Scotland and England. During her time in Edinburgh she and her husband were friendly with Patrick Geddes and other figures on the Edinburgh literary scene. Nevertheless, she ‘was determined to get to London, the Mecca of so many literary and other dreams’ (281). Once there she became president of the Women Journalists’ Society. Her most important literary friendship was with William Robertson Nicoll (discussed in Section 3 above), who in 1893 invited her to place her name to a new monthly magazine, The Woman at Home, which became known as ‘Annie Swan’s Magazine’. Swan did not edit the magazine, but was chief contributor and managed the ‘problem’ column,

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‘Over the Teacups’. Annie Swan had become a marketable name, so much so that in 1894 Nicoll suggested she create a new identity for her writing. He suggested she write some stories in the British Weekly under the pseudonym David Lyall. The Land of the Leal was issued by Hodder & Stoughton in 1896 on the back of the success of Ian Maclaren (see Section 3 above for more on his work) and was followed by numerous other volumes. In the 1920s, Swan became even more associated with newspaper fiction and the People’s Friend in particular. She still had a volume market, however. Leng, the proprietors of the Friend published scores of novels in book form in the 1920s and 1930s in the People’s Friend Library; these included several of Oliphant’s earlier publications as well as their own. In the same period Swan churned out dozens of novels in Hodder & Stoughton’s famous 2s ‘Yellow Jackets’, accompanied with the slogan: ‘always human and fascinating’. Subscription libraries like Mudie’s and Smith’s took only a few copies of Swan’s books; free public libraries, who inevitably appealed to lower-class readers, took more. As she states in her autobiography: ‘I had always been regarded as a “safe writer”, whose books could be put into the hands of young persons without any fear of deleterious consequences to the readers’ (281). She also saw the value of meeting the demands of editors and publishers: ‘I have honestly tried to give them what they want, realising that he who pays the piper has the right to call the tune’ (288). In the 1880s such comments would have been seen as an embarrassing betrayal of artistic integrity but by the 1930s the literary market had fragmented to such an extent that nobody would have expected anything di≠erent from a writer like Swan. Her self-assessment of her work was frank: I have never had any illusions about the place accorded to me in the world of letters. Judged by some canons, it is a very low place. I shall never be recommended by the Book Society nor be allowed to consort with the elect within the guarded portals. August reviewers, who append their names to their pronouncements, would not waste a moment on any book of mine. (288) Reviewers in the 1880s had wasted their time on Swan’s fiction; by the 1930s, however, there was an inescapable fracture between literary and popular fiction. Andrew Nash

In spite of the cheapening price of books, the subscription libraries remained the main market for serious works of fiction and they conducted a tacit censorship, as Compton Mackenzie discovered when Sinister Street (1913) was banned by both Boots and W. H. Smith. The

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threat of censorship and prosecution for obscenity or libel seemed an ever-present part of literary culture, stalking publishers and printers as much as authors (Parkes 1996). Outdated laws allowed individuals to exert pressure by threatening to sue for damages. When John Middleton Murry objected to Catherine Carswell’s life of D. H. Lawrence, The Savage Pilgrimage (1932), the book had to be hastily withdrawn. MacDiarmid’s Lucky Poet also su≠ered this fate in 1943. An important innovation of the inter-war period was the emergence of book clubs, notably the Book Society. Formed in 1929 and modelled on the American Book of the Month Club, the Book Society delivered to their members a monthly choice on the day of publication and provided author and publisher with a guaranteed and substantial extra sale. They also conferred a canonising authority on works, rather like the Man Booker Prize does today. Neil Gunn’s Morning Tide was a Book Society choice in 1931. Amidst the increasing commercialisation of publishing and the threat of censorship, modernist authors of the 1920s were to some extent forced out of the mainstream market. It is well-documented that the major works of literary modernism were published not by the leading publishers of the day but by small presses and in little magazines or expensive, de luxe editions (Willison). To an extent Hugh MacDiarmid is representative of this type of author but he operated across the whole range of the marketplace.4 As Glen Murray notes, MacDiarmid was e≠ective in ‘cultivating, manipulating or creating media for his writing’ (MacDiarmid 1996: x). He could alternate between contributions to the avant-garde New Review and work on provincial newspapers in Scotland and elsewhere. He placed poems in national dailies, such as the Glasgow Herald, as well as in specially-created smaller publications such as The Modern Scot. Like George Orwell, he used the modern media to spread his social and cultural agenda and some of the most influential writings of the Scottish literary renaissance appeared in newspapers, such as The Dunfermline Press, and niche publications like the Scottish Educational Journal, a weekly newspaper read mainly by schoolteachers. MacDiarmid believed that the strength of the Scottish literary renaissance depended upon the establishment of periodicals and indigenous publishing institutions. In his early career, he found support for his literary works from Scottish publishers. His early poetry books were published by Blackwood, and the first two volumes of his anthology 4

In this section I am much indebted to Duncan Glen’s Hugh MacDiarmid (Christopher Murray Grieve) and the Scottish Renaissance (1964), which remains the most comprehensive account of the material contexts of MacDiarmid’s career.

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Figure 5.2 Cover of Frederick Victor Branford, 5 Poems, Porpoise Press, 1922, first work published by the latter. The cover design is by Cecile Walton.

Northern Numbers were issued by the Edinburgh firm of T. N. Foulis. When Foulis went bankrupt, however, MacDiarmid published the third volume himself. Private publishing was characteristic of modernism and became a means for some writers to overcame the obstacles of the commercial market. MacDiarmid explained the advantages of

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subscription publishing to Helen Cruickshank: ‘Northern Numbers had to sell,’ he wrote, and he had included ‘certain types of verse greatly admired by many people but to which I personally am utterly indi≠erent’. Publishing the Scottish Chapbook privately, however, meant that ‘commercial conditions won’t weigh: and I’ll be out for genuinely significant and experimental work wherever it is to be found’ (MacDiarmid 1984: 108). Several of MacDiarmid’s books were also published in limited editions, including First Hymn to Lenin (Unicorn Press, 1931) and Second Hymn to Lenin (1932), which was issued in a signed edition of 100 copies under the imprint of Valda Trevlyn, later MacDiarmid’s wife, before it was commercially published in 1935 by Stanley Nott. Literary modernism is characterised by such coterie publishing and close association between authors/publishers and booksellers (Rainey). The Modern Scot grew out of the Abbey bookshop in St Andrews. Annals of the Five Senses (1923), MacDiarmid’s first book, he not only published but also sold himself – designating the shed in his back garden the Scottish Poetry Book Shop (the name modelled on Harold Monro’s Poetry Bookshop). This was in e≠ect a second-hand bookshop but it provided a sales outlet for MacDiarmid’s own publications. MacDiarmid’s self-publishing ventures aided his e≠orts to reestablish an independent periodical and publishing culture in Scotland. At the same time, he continued to exploit the mass media wherever he could. From 1927 to 1930, he published a series of articles on Scottish topics in over forty local newspapers through a special bureau formed in connection with the Scottish Secretariat, a home rule movement. A throwback to the syndicating practices of the nineteenth-century Scottish press, it is very likely that MacDiarmid reached his widest audience with these articles.

Neil M. Gunn (1891–1973) Neil M. Gunn achieved critical and commercial success as Scotland’s foremost novelist of the twentieth century. Yet he came to professional authorship late: his first novel, The Grey Coast, was published in 1926 when he was 35 and he did not become a full-time writer until 1937 at the age of 46. The latter delay was due to his sense of the insecurity of authorship as a profession compared to the stability of Civil Service tenure and pension. The Grey Coast itself had a relatively long gestation period before it was published by Jonathan Cape in London. Cape’s reader, Edward Garnett, the friend and editor of D. H. Lawrence, had recommended acceptance for publication but with several provisos. A great number of alterations and deletions were to

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Figure 5.3 Neil Gunn cover, The Atom of Delight, Faber & Faber, 1956.

be made. While, on the one hand, Garnett praised the simplicity and directness of the narrative, and, in particular, the dialogue, he also criticised the strain apparent in Gunn’s attempts to create atmosphere. At times too, according to Garnett, Gunn himself destroyed, by intrusive authorial comment, this atmosphere that he had so painstakingly established. Gunn, demonstrating the compliance of the unpublished author, agreed to the revisions and the novel duly appeared. He was never to be as acquiescent again, particularly at the point where he largely abandoned writing in 1956 (at the significant age of 65) with the publication of The Atom of Delight. The Grey Coast sold 543 copies in a full-price edition and 113 copies in a cheaper colonial edition between June and the close of 1926. These sales brought Neil Gunn royalties of £21 5s 6d. Sales thereafter were much slower and, in 1927 and 1928, only 103 further copies were bought. On the other hand, while the total royalties in Great Britain and the colonies amounted to only £27 ls, Gunn did receive £42 15s in 1926 as an advance royalty on an American edition. In 1930, Faber & Faber (on behalf of the Porpoise Press) bought the remaining stock of thirty-five copies of The Grey Coast from Cape. A further edition of the novel was then published by the Porpoise Press (a Faber subsidiary) in 1931 – to which Gunn made further revisions from a now more experienced perspective. The 1926 publication of The Grey Coast was followed up almost immediately. Cape had

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an option on his next two novels and, accordingly, Gunn submitted the manuscript of another novel to them in late 1926. This must have been lying in the proverbial drawer and represented an even more immature e≠ort than The Grey Coast. Cape rejected it because it seemed to them to be inflated ‘Celtic Twilight’. Blackwood also rejected it in early 1927. This failure seemed to depress Gunn for a while. He even thought of publishing the novel himself but was dissuaded from this by friends. By September 1927, he was feeling so discouraged that he considered abandoning writing altogether to concentrate on his customs and excise duties and his political commitments. Within a month, however, he began work on a new novel, The Lost Glen, but ‘road-tested’ it as a serial in The Scots Magazine from April to November 1928. It was rejected in 1928 by Cape who still held an option on Gunn’s next two novels after The Grey Coast. Cape’s rejection was followed by that of Chambers and Heinemann in 1928 and Benn, Hodder & Stoughton, and Wishart in 1929. (The Lost Glen went into a drawer until 1932 when, in a heavily revised version, it was published by the Porpoise Press in the wake of the success of Morning Tide in 1931. In its Porpoise edition, The Lost Glen represents a more polished product than the serial. What it may have lost in the way of passion, of ferocious indignation, it has gained in a more balanced structure and a clearer theme. It has benefited, as did the Porpoise Grey Coast, from Gunn’s increasing skill and maturity as a writer.) Faced with these successive failures to have a second novel published, and armed with the criticism of Garnett and others, Gunn decided to adopt a new approach. He began writing, probably in late 1929, a novel provisionally entitled Under the Sun (renamed Morning Tide), drawing on his apprenticeship to date. Morning Tide was completed in mid-1930 and submitted to the newly reinvigorated Porpoise Press. In the Porpoise, Gunn found a publisher sympathetic to his aesthetic and political goals and ideals; in one form or other he was to remain with them until 1956. In 1930 George Blake and George Malcolm Thomson had just taken over the management of the Porpoise Press and had gone into partnership with Faber & Faber. The scope of the Porpoise had previously been limited to the publication of verse by Scottish poets but the new partners wished to extend the range of their publishing activities. George Blake was extremely enthusiastic about Morning Tide and welcomed it as the first full-length novel to be issued by the Porpoise Press. Gunn also o≠ered to Blake and Thomson The Lost Glen serial, suggesting that he would rewrite it for publication. In the meantime, Morning Tide was published. The Porpoise initially printed 1,500 copies of the novel and ordered an immediate reprint on the news that it had been selected as a Book Society Choice. From April to November 1931, Gunn earned around £80 from this work. Porpoise then brought out

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the new, revised edition of The Grey Coast. The Lost Glen, in its rewritten form, followed in 1932. The circumstances of earlier rejection and newfound confidence in his own writing abilities enabled Gunn to make an unprecedented impact with three novels appearing from Porpoise in eighteen months. Gunn had now established himself as a novelist and a regular flow of work found favour with both public and publishers. However, this was not su∞cient to encourage Gunn to give up his full-time post with the customs and excise and take the risk of attempting to earn his living solely from writing. This came with the success of Highland River in 1937 although Gunn continued to have to supplement his royalties with journalism, particularly during the war years from 1939 to 1945. Alistair McCleery

By the 1930s there was a rapprochement between modernist writers and the commercial marketplace and it is noticeable that, in spite of his commitment to Scottish publishing, MacDiarmid found considerable support in this period from commercial publishers operating from London. As Christopher Harvie writes: ‘[T]he old Tories at Blackwoods and London publishers, notably T. S. Eliot were to do more for the Scottish renaissance than the Scottish popular press’ (1988: 26–7). In the 1930s his books were issued by, among others, Gollancz, Jarrolds and, most significantly, Routledge, who published Scottish Eccentrics (1936). Routledge also issued a series of books by Scottish writers called The Voice of Scotland, which had been developed by Lewis Grassic Gibbon. The presence of a fellow Scot, A. J. B. Paterson, in the Routledge firm gave MacDiarmid and Gibbon an important source of favour on the London literary scene and indicates that the wider British market was still useful in this period, even to Scottish nationalists. MacDiarmid nevertheless found that most commercial publishers were unwilling to take risks on his poetry. In the late 1930s T. S. Eliot was supportive of his work but he could not persuade his fellow directors at Faber & Faber to publish either In Memoriam James Joyce or Mature Art. MacDiarmid’s later poetry was supported mainly by the Glasgow publisher William Maclellan, who issued In Memoriam James Joyce on subscription in 1955. In the 1940s, Maclellan became ‘almost private printer-publisher’ to the Scottish literary renaissance (Glen 1964: 187). Together with MacDiarmid’s quarterly, The Voice of Scotland, Maclellan’s press established in Glasgow a forum, on the borders of the commercial book trade, facilitating the publication of work by a new generation of Scottish poets, including volumes from writers

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such as William Soutar, Sydney Goodsir Smith, Sorley Maclean and, in 1952, Edwin Morgan.

1945–80 (and a glimpse of the present) In the immediate post-war period, changes in the marketplace made the economic position of the author precarious. In 1953 the Society of Authors issued a pamphlet entitled Critical Times for Authors which predicted the end of professional authorship as we have known it in the past (Bonham-Carter 1984). As production and distribution costs increased beyond the rate of retail prices, more copies of a book had to be sold to break even. Publishers were less willing to take risks and sought reductions in royalties. A decline in literary periodicals left fewer outlets for poetry, criticism and essays, and the market for magazine fiction also contracted. In 1922 there were twenty-seven ‘fiction magazines’; in 1962 only two survived. Furthermore, the expansion of paperback publishing in the 1960s was seen by some to entail the ‘contraction of minority reading’ as some authors, whose books did not warrant large print-runs, ‘lost their traditional opportunities of prolonging the life of a book through a cheap hard-bound edition’ (Findlater: 303, 286). In the wake of the expansion of public libraries, the once powerful subscription libraries disappeared in the 1960s bringing about a further reduction in the rate of sales. In the post-war period public libraries became the main market for books and fiction in particular, reducing the overall volumes of book sales and, consequently, the earnings of authorship. Massive public lending of copyright works precipitated the campaign for Public Lending Right – the right of authors to be remunerated for the loaning of their books through public libraries (BonhamCarter 1984). The economic conditions of the market made it almost impossible to live by writing alone. In 1962 evidence suggested that ‘the majority of professional authors earned from their writing of all kinds well below the national average wage’ (Findlater: 283). One area of growth was broadcasting. As Walter Allen summarised in 1957: ‘At the beginning of the century, the value of a book, for author and publisher alike, lay in the book itself, as a book. Now, increasingly the by-products of the book are becoming in some instances more valuable’ (21). Film, television and radio became additional sources of income for writers. Adding to his pre-war success, A. J. Cronin found lasting fame in the 1960s with the popular radio and television series Dr Finlay’s Casebook (revived in 1993) based on a series of short stories. Radio opportunities increased

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with the establishment of the Scottish Home Service in 1945 and subsequent developments in regional broadcasting (McDowell). Iain Crichton Smith wrote several plays for radio including an abridged serialisation of Consider the Lilies in 1967. His radio work was broadcast on both local and national frequencies (Conn 1992).

Joyce Holms Born shortly before the Second World War, Joyce Holms began her writing career after taking a correspondence course in short-story writing when she was in her twenties. Her first appearance in print came in the late 1960s after the People’s Friend magazine accepted two stories paying her £20 for each one. By this time she was married with a small family and, because she and her husband were running a small hotel near Killin, Holms found that she could keep up with her writing as a hobby in the winter months and started writing occasional stories for magazines. She soon joined a local writers’ circle and submitted a short story, ‘Fergus’, to BBC radio. The story was set in a Highland community and had an old crofter as the central character. It was broadcast twice on the ‘Morning Story’ slot on the BBC Light Programme station, and earned Holms a fee of £50. The broadcast was heard by an employee of Kilbrannan Publishing Ltd who then suggested to Holms that she write a collection of short stories using Fergus as a central character, which they would publish. By this time, however, Holms had decided to write novels as they were perceived to be more lucrative: she had written a historical romance which had been rejected by Hurst & Blackett. She later submitted this to Mills & Boon who accepted it and, while it was being published, requested that she write a sequel. Both these romances had a relative degree of success and were also published in France, Germany and Hungary. These were soon followed by two more modest romances that were published by Robert Hale in the early 1990s. After relocating to Edinburgh Holms joined the Edinburgh Writers’ Circle (a little group for novice novel writers) and changed genre. Historical romances were no longer as popular so she decided to write a crime thriller, one that was set in Edinburgh and featured the sleuthing duo that was to initiate her ‘Fizz and Buchanan’ novels. Here she met other published ‘midlist’ authors who were all willing to give support and o≠er advice and was soon faced with a choice about what to do with her completed manuscript: send to a literary agent or a publisher? She sent it to Headline as it fitted in with other titles they had on their list and they o≠ered her a two-book deal: a book a year for the next two years. Payment Deferred was published in 1996 and Foreign Body in 1997.

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Having secured a second two-book deal with Headline, Holms was advised by her editor that she ‘ought to get an agent’5 as an agent would help her in securing more income and exposure since there was only ‘a certain amount of publicity’ included in the terms of her contract. She followed up a recommended agent who agreed to take her on in return for 10 per cent commission; their acquaintance lasted from 1998 until 2002 with limited success. After the third and last two-book contract ended in 2001, Headline decided to ‘drop [Holms] from their list’. The reasons why were felt to be partly due to limited sales outwith the Central Belt as well as Holms herself being ‘just an elderly woman’. In 2002 Holms got a new agent from the MBA Literary Agency who agreed to a 15 per cent commission and soon signed a one-book contract with Allison & Busby. In 2003 they published Hot Potato and have since published a further two, all of which follow the format of her previous crime novels and feature the same central characters. The four publishers have all o≠ered her di≠erent terms and contracts. For each Mills & Boon novel she received a £1,000 advance, 50 per cent on signature of the contract and 50 per cent on publication, with a royalty rate of 4 per cent on all copies sold. Robert Hale, on the other hand, o≠ered a oneo≠ payment of £100 for the copyright to each title. This meant that Joyce received no money when Hale sold one story to Woman’s Weekly magazine, where it was condensed and included in a small seasonal illustrated edition. The Headline contracts o≠ered slightly better terms: each two-book contract was worth £6,000 (£1,750 on signature, £1,000 on publication of the hardback, £1,000 for the paperback, £750 on delivery of the second book and £750 on publication of each format). All titles had a print run of 1,000 copies in hardback and 5,000 in paperback. The royalty rate received for the hard-back was 10 per cent for the first 2,500 copies sold, 12.5 per cent on a further 2,500, and capped at 15 per cent for all copies thereafter. The royalty on the paperback was 7.5 per cent for the first 5,000 copies and for further copies was capped at 10 per cent. To date no titles or editions have been reprinted, suggesting that public libraries are the main purchaser for each £17.99 hardback whereas the public tend to buy the mass-market paperback retailing at either £5.99 or £6.99. The three titles published by Allison & Busby to date have each been under a single-book contract with a rising advance: Hot Potato secured £2,000 and the latest, Missing Link, £2,750. The royalty rates are the same as those o≠ered by Headline but with smaller initial print runs: 750 in hardback and 3,500 in paperback. 5

The quotes are taken from a series of interviews conducted between Joyce Holms and Simon Ward in 2003 and 2005. These interviews were also the primary source of all information contained herein.

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Headline managed to lease the large print rights for all of the six titles they published to F. A. Thorpe Ltd for a five-year period, each time for a flat fee of £700. Joyce’s new agent, after managing to get back all other subsidiary rights from Headline, immediately sold the audio rights to Isis Soundings for a similar length of time. For each title she received an advance of £1,000, paid in two instalments, with a 7.5 per cent royalty on all copies sold. Over and above the sales of her books a continuing source of income has been that from the Public Lending Right (PLR) now that she has eleven titles in libraries in one format or another. In 2003 she commented on the remunerative aspect of her authorship: ‘[W]riting for me is a hobby and it’s barely a paying hobby. I’m lucky if I earn £6,000 per year and half of that comes from my PLR cheque. My royalty cheques are small but it does mean that I’ve earned back the advances on my books.’ Simon Ward

Much of this chapter has focused on fiction. I want to conclude by looking briefly and broadly at poetry which has been most a≠ected by the financial constraints imposed upon professional authorship by changes in the marketplace since 1945. Poets have always been faced with the inevitable fact that poetry volumes do not sell in large quantities. The marketplace is simply not large enough to allow even the most famous or popular poets to survive on poetry alone. Even when poets have adopted writing as their principal means of income, they have always had to subsidise their poetry with other forms of writing. It was the constraints of a full-time job that contributed to Douglas Dunn’s decision in 1971 to give up librarianship for the vagaries of the writing life: ‘I hankered after the opportunity to sit down and do some writing’ (qtd in Crawford 1992: 9). Dunn’s freelance career has consisted of reviewing and radio and television work in addition to writing poetry and short stories, but his work has also been supported by teaching. Having held various posts in universities as fellow in creative writing or writer in residence, he was appointed Professor of English Literature at the University of St Andrews in 1991. There has always been a close connection between poets and educational institutions, especially universities. In addition to Dunn, Alexander Scott, Edwin Morgan and many other major Scottish poets have held, or hold, professorial posts in Scottish universities. Robert Crawford, who has discussed in full the issue of poet-academics, historically and worldwide, writes: ‘Schoolteachers, writers-in-residence, writers in schools, teachers of creative writing – it is hard to name a modern poet in Scotland who has

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or has had no contact with English Studies in universities’ (Crawford 2001: 200). As Morgan has commented, for some poets it has been ‘the best solution of the problem every writer has to face – the problem, how to live’ (Morgan 1990: 194). W. S. Graham discovered a di≠erent method of how to live – private patronage. From the 1970s he received a monthly payment from the poet and critic Robin Skelton in exchange for the sale of his manuscripts and working materials. In addition to ensuring the preservation of a large part of Graham’s papers, the payments ‘were the greater part of his income and amounted to much more than his combined royalties from Penguin and Faber, and fees from broadcasts and readings’ (Lopez: 6–7). More commonly, authors have benefited from another kind of patronage – charity and state support. In 1938 MacDiarmid received £125 from the Royal Literary Fund, an institution established in the late eighteenth century. Then, in 1950, he was awarded a Civil List pension of £150 a year. Graham did even better from this source, being awarded £500 a year in 1974, again through Skelton’s influence. From the late 1960s, Scottish authors have benefited hugely from support o≠ered by the Scottish Arts Council. Duncan Glen has argued that ‘the single biggest influence on the development of Scottish literature since 1960 are the grants and subsidies given by the Scottish Arts Council’ (1999b: 141). The Arts Council of Great Britain was founded in 1946. The Scottish allocation increased under the Labour governments of 1964–70 and in 1967 the Scottish Committee became the Scottish Arts Council. With greater autonomy, the money began to be more widely distributed among the arts with a greater portion going to literature and writers (Harvie 1994: 162). In addition to awarding grants to writers and to publishers of books and magazines, the SAC has funded writer’s fellowships, held in conjunction with public libraries, universities and colleges, and contributed to the wider outreach of literature through schemes such as ‘Writers in Schools’. Edwin Morgan recorded a ‘new popularity of public poetry-readings by poets during the 1960s’ (1990: 205). Today, the Scottish Poetry Library plays a similarly important role in exploiting the marketplace through setting up readings, workshops, festivals and exhibitions. Financial support from the SAC confirmed the continued development of small presses and literary periodicals in post-war Scotland. Several important publications emerged in the 1950s in support of Scottish poetry. Notable were Gairm, which provided a forum for Gaelic poetry by such writers as Iain Crichton Smith, Lines Review and Duncan Glen’s Akros and Akros Publishing. In this, Scottish publishing

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was following general trends. Writing in 1984, Victor Bonham-Carter considered that the contraction of the traditional periodical market contributed to the ‘extraordinary proliferation of little magazines since the last war [few of which] have been commercial ventures in the ordinary sense, and very few have paid their contributors’ (146). Noncommercial publishing is typical of much modern poetry. As Edwin Morgan noted of Maclellan’s Poetry Scotland series: ‘[H]e could only print these “literature” books because he carried out commercial printing . . . at the same time’ (Morgan 1990: 18). Morgan considered that the demise of Maclellan’s press ‘left a gap in Glasgow publishing’ and in spite of the growth of small presses, Scottish authors of the 1960s and 1970s were still hampered by the absence of a strong publishing industry in Scotland. As Morgan stated: The problem is to keep people in Scotland – if they could feel they could get published in Scotland. As soon as you go to a London publisher, as a novelist virtually has to do, then you’ve begun the drift south. If we had one or two good publishers who were concerned to foster native literature, not just best-sellers, this would make a big di≠erence. (1990: 18) This opinion was echoed by Duncan Glen in the introduction to The Akros Anthology of Scottish Poetry 1965–70 (1970). He bemoaned the way most Scottish poets turned away from Scotland: They are involved in the Scottish literary scene and perhaps initially established themselves through the Scottish literary magazines, or through Scottish readings, or through Scottish small press publishing. Finally, however, they look to non-Scottish editorial and critical sources for recognition. They wish to please English editors and publishers . . . as long as there is a lack of native publishers the Scottish poet will be tempted by the need to give London what it wants. (Glen 1999b: 43) No doubt this view was widely held in the 1970s but since the 1980s there has been a renewed confidence in Scottish culture propelled by the explosion of creativity which contributed in no small measure to the cultural nationalism that gathered force in the period after the 1979 devolution referendum. And a concluding glance at the contemporary scene shows that whilst much of the force and distinctiveness of contemporary Scottish literature comes through its outspoken opposition to the London-based cultural institutions that drive the British book industry, there is a new-found optimism in the openings for Scottish writers in the wider British and international marketplace. On the one

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hand, writers such as James Kelman continue to position themselves against the assumed cultural centre – what MacDiarmid called the ‘centralisation of journalism, publishing and idea-mongering in London’ (1996: 19). The furore that greeted the award of the Booker Prize to How Late It Was, How Late, published by Secker & Warburg in 1994, appears to endorse that view. On the other hand, the considerable success of Scottish authors in London is evidence not only of the centrality of Scottish literature to international culture but also of the shift in attitude towards the perceived Anglocentricity of the publishing world. It is no longer felt that in order to succeed Scottish writers have to give English editors what London wants. The influence of major poetry publishers, such as Carcanet, in supporting Scottish poetry is testament to that. Furthermore, as in the 1890s, several of the most important literary editors in London are themselves Scots. The strong Scottish flavour of the Secker & Warburg list owed much to Robin Robertson, who has since moved to Jonathan Cape where he has been instrumental in building up a high-profile list of fiction and poetry with Scottish writers, such as Alan Warner, A. L. Kennedy, John Burnside and Robert Crawford, to the fore. Cape has been labelled ‘the most successful Scottish publisher outside Scotland’ and Robertson, who is himself a poet, continues the long Scottish tradition of authors who are publishers (Norris: 15). There was a time when the success of Scottish authors in London would have been viewed negatively, as part of the emptying out of Scottish talent and the failure of a native publishing industry. But as Duncan Glen has commented: ‘[W]here would many a famous Scottish writer be without the kick start given by a Scottish publisher?’ Most contemporary writers have benefited in their early career from small presses and little magazines – Robert Crawford has written of the ‘splendidly supportive Akros’ (Glen 1999: 113; O’Rourke: 60). The important point here is not that Scottish writers, once established, look beyond Scottish magazines and publishing houses, but that the existence of Scottish magazines and publishing houses allows promising writers to become established and to reach a circle of readers that might not otherwise be possible. This is testament not to the dearth of cultural resources in Scotland but to the success of Scottish culture. It is an indication of the greater confidence in the internationalism of Scottish culture that there is now a recognition that the ‘London’ – which is in fact the ‘world’ – market is far from being hostile to Scottish literature.

The Economics of Authorship Simon Ward The twentieth century bore witness to an increasingly diverse number of means through which authors could realise financial gain by their occupation. Fundamental to an author’s income is the legal protection vested in their work (copyright) which is ‘founded on the concept of the unique individual who creates something original and is entitled to reap a profit from those labours’ (Rose 1993: 2). For writers this ensures that their texts are regarded as intellectual property and they alone, as creators, can sell or license the right to reproduce (copy) their work. Copyright is therefore distinct and separate from the form of the work. It could be stated quite baldly, then, that the developments in the economics of authorship over the twentieth century are primarily a result of the appearance and increasing importance of such subsidiary rights that have come into being because of developments in the media. That is to say, the variety of forms in which an author’s literary work can be reproduced have a≠orded the greater possibility of more sources of income for an author. A common misconception held by many authors in the latter half of the nineteenth century was that their trade was more lucrative than it actually was. True, there had been a few much-publicised writers with well-documented incomes, such as Scott, Dickens and Trollope, but very often they were an exception whose careers were marked by prodigious output matched with an equally large market. Many aspirant and established authors failed to acknowledge that a successful career in authorship entailed a perceptive insight into the publishing business. Equally, however, publishers were quick to capitalise on this ignorance to secure larger profits for themselves. In 1887 Margaret Oliphant (1828–97) wrote to her publisher, ‘[A]s a matter of fact while writers barely manage to live almost all publishing firms thrive exceedingly’ 409

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and later feared that literature ‘is becoming a profession in which people with only private fortunes can embark’.6

Publication and the sale of literary property The triumvirate of text, publisher and market, then, are the principal components of an author’s success – all inextricably linked with the economics (income and profit) accruing from the transmission and sale of literary property. Until the royalty system of payment became common practice in the late 1880s authors usually sold their property either outright or on a ‘half-profits’ basis. The form in which their texts appeared reflected the two largest readerships: as serials (for the periodical and magazine market); and as novels (for library-borrowers). That publishers were ‘thriving’ was often as a direct result of the careless means by which authors disposed of their rights who, as some thought, had only themselves to blame. Authors generally were admonished for being ‘a set of men so ignorant of the conditions of the trade on which they largely depended’ (Birrell: 201). The outright sale of copyright ensured that an author was denied any future payment and that all profit went to the publisher. The expanding popular market and successive reprints of individual and collected works were proving lucrative and under the terms of the 1842 Copyright Act meant that whoever held the rights legally had them for forty-two years (or seven years after the death of the author). Nevertheless, financial hardship usually compelled authors to sell outright. Margaret Oliphant, dependent on her writing to provide for a large family in the last decades of her life, gradually saw the value of her rights reduce: in 1864 she was paid £1,500 by Blackwoods for the serial and book rights to The Perpetual Curate, whilst in 1890 she had to concede the copyright of The Heir Presumptive to Macmillan’s for £250. Outright sale was also the result of naïvety or publisher trickery, as in the example provided by R. M. Ballantyne (1825–94) who, in the 1850s, sold the copyrights to The Coral Island and several other books to Nelsons for amounts as low as £9. Deterred that ‘his’ books were going through so many editions he, several years later, tried unsuccessfully to buy them back (Quayle: 203–4). In 1893 he remonstrated to Nelsons that ‘for thirty-eight years [you have] reaped the whole profits’ while not earning him a penny. He was doubly remorseful of the situation when they went on to reissue the books in a cheaper format and wrote to them, ‘[I]t is quite impossible for me to compete satisfactorily with you when the books wh[ich] you 6

Letters dated 18 March 1887 and 20 July 1887. Blackwood Papers, NLS, MS. 4507.

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now sell at 2/6 are similar in size and get-up to those wh[ich] I have been selling up to now at 5/-’ (Quayle: 291). Until the late 1890s, however, when the single-volume became widespread, the dominant form of the novel was in three volumes. Increased literacy levels after 1870 and cheaper costs of production saw a rapid rise in the number of newspapers and magazines printed between then and 1900, o≠ering authors more outlets for their work. Publishers would commission serials and short stories from ‘in-house’ authors while novices could speculatively submit one-o≠ pieces. In 1883 Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) sent the story ‘J. Habakuk Jephson’s Statement’ to the Cornhill Magazine for which he received a cheque for £30, however more usual payments were less than this and often only a couple of guineas. While in 1870 there were 1,390 newspapers and 626 magazines published in the United Kingdom, thirty years later these figures had increased to 2,234 and 1,778 respectively (Saunders: 271). Thus more established authors could receive a larger outright payment for a work that would include both serial and book rights. After serialisation the subsequent publication of the ‘three-decker’, retailing at the ‘artificially high price’ of 31s 6d (Griest: 215), encouraged book borrowing and publishers found a ready market in the circulating libraries, despite the almost mandatory discount where the libraries paid only 15s. Nevertheless, the library market was beneficial to both publisher and author: publishers were ‘more willing to take a risk on a first novel with a definite library order waiting’, and for the unknown author the libraries provided them with ‘both their first chance, and later the opportunity to develop a reputation’ (Griest: 163). In such instances novels were commonly published on the half-profits system with even a sale of 400 copies enough to guarantee an adequate profit margin, while a sale of 500 was a ‘good success for a novel’ which would earn an author about £100. This system of sale, however, was open to abuse and it was not uncommon for publishers to mislead and lie about the costs of production as these had to be met before the profits were split. Although fairer than outright sale (in the sense that the author’s share was linked to the number of sales), there was still the ‘objectionable’ term that an author should ‘cede his copyright out and out to the publisher’ (Sprigge: 38).

Market expansion and professionalisation The ten years between the establishment of the Society of Authors in 1884 and the demise of the circulating libraries in 1894 occasioned the most groundbreaking and progressive developments in the economics

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of authorship than had been seen since the 1710 Copyright Act: an author’s work became protected in Europe and America following the international copyright agreements of 1886 and 1891; advances in printing technology and the lower costs of raw materials reduced the cost of books and increased both the size of print runs and the chances for more authors to embark on a career; literary agents began to assume a more conspicuous presence in the publishing process; and the royalty system of payment for authors began to be instituted. Within this context publishers found themselves in greater competition to satisfy the needs of a larger and more literate book-buying public and turned to the growing numbers of authors to supply the demand for written entertainment. Changes in the costs of book production, where 100,000 copies was ‘much the same as 10,000’ per unit cost (Gaskell, qtd in Weedon: 192), meant that the 6s price of a one-volume novel encouraged public, rather than library, patronage. More formal contractual agreements began to exist between publishers and newly enfranchised authors as the latter began to realise the commercial potential of their work. The royalty system allowed authors to retain ownership of copyright while leasing the right to publish for a limited period and in return received either a fixed or variable percentage of the retail price of a book. As the publishing industry became more subject to business practice, royalties seemed ‘a more equitable means of paying writers in a way which reflected their commercial success’ and helped secure at least a reasonable approximation to a steady income (Feather: 178). The importance of the Net Book Agreement in 1900 cannot be overemphasised as it was singularly regarded as ‘the principal support upon which the whole structure of the [book] industry rests’ (Feather: 183). By stabilising retail price it also gave firm ground upon which to base royalty payments. A usual rate of 10 per cent was o≠ered to authors up to a certain threshold of sales whereupon the publisher could a≠ord to increase the rate as the costs of production decreased. Occasionally publishers would advance an author a sum of money (in lieu of royalties) if they felt sure the book would sell enough copies to ‘earn it out’, thereafter a royalty payment would continue. The commodification of literary property and its production became complete, then, within a new system of commercial relations: texts (as books) became products, created by authors and supplied to publishers (as manufacturer/distributor), sold to customers (bookshops) for consumption by the market (book-buying public). The copyright advances and the development of the international market both increased the number of subsidiary rights that an author could possess to include: book, serial (first, second and syndication),

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dramatic, foreign and translation. Each could be separately negotiated and sold. The appearance of the literary agent (see the case study below for more detail about their origin and evolution) was almost a necessity, given the opportunities and potential revenue of the ‘intensive farming of literary copyrights’ (Eliot 2003: 46–7). By employing an agent to take care of business and contractual matters the more successful authors could start to reap the rewards of professionalism and free themselves from their publisher’s bondage.

Literary agents Literary agency became institutionalised within the publishing nexus in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Just as the commercialisation of literature helped bring about the professionalisation of authorship, so too did it necessitate the establishment of professional ‘middlemen’ between author and publisher. Literary agents have been variously described as ‘parasites’ and a ‘necessary evil’ for they were initially seen to be disruptive of the author–publisher relationship (Heinemann, qtd in Hepburn: 1; Gordon 1996: 125). However, it was as a consequence of this relationship that they came into being for authors were often thought to be ‘unscrupulously exploited by publishers’ towards the end of the nineteenth century (Taylor: 250). Such exploitation was usually a result of the outright sale of the author’s copyright to the publisher, a practice which consequently saw the publisher receive increased finance that was generally regarded as the author’s due. The intervention of the literary agent discouraged this form of commerce by the subdivision of rights: besides the right to publish the book, there also came into being such subsidiary rights as serial, translation and those for foreign markets. Through negotiation with various publishers, literary agents – employed by and acting for authors – could either sell these or license them for a limited period, often ensuring a larger return for the author. Arguably the first literary agent was the Scotsman A. P. (Alexander Pollock) Watt (1834–1914) who opened his agency in London in 1875 but did not advertise as one until 1881. His ability to recognise the realistic value of literary property and accurately to place it in the most suitable market or show it to the most appropriate publisher, while at the same time receiving a 10 per cent commission on all monies received by the author, initiated a practice which, with few minor changes, has formed the basis of the literary agency tradition since them. It is often the case that agents have previously served a ‘lay apprenticeship’ by working in publishing, as a result of which they can use contacts and experience gained to advantageous e≠ect when working with authors.

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Familiarity with the politics of publishing as well as an insider’s knowledge of the business and economic aspects of the trade are virtual necessities when seeking the best terms and undertaking contractual negotiations on behalf of clients. The literary agent’s role has now widened to include those of salesman, editor, lawyer and accountant. Subsidiary rights are now seen to be the main source of income for many authors as a result of the growth of media and foreign markets. As a former president of the Association of Authors’ Agents commented: ‘[A]s the opportunities in the media have grown throughout the 1970s and 1980s, agents have steered their authors to positions of decreasing dependence on any one provider, most notably the hardback publisher’ (Sissons: 130). Besides simply selling rights agents also have to negotiate the minutiae of contracts. Such contractual issues can now include: the typeface and design of the book, the size of the print run, publicity and marketing budgets, and royalty rates. Other important tasks are to keep the author informed of the publisher’s activities and ensure prompt payment of royalties. Publishers are notorious for withholding information from authors – not least in royalty statements, which have been called ‘the least understood documents in our industry’ which generally obscure vital information relating to a book’s performance (Blake 1993: 49). The relative position occupied by the literary agent came to assume greater importance as the twentieth century progressed. This is given testimony by the increase in their number: in 1910 there were ten firms of literary agents and by 2003 this had increased to 161. If literary agents are ‘relative newcomers’ to the UK publishing infrastructure then they are even newer in Scotland (Gillies: 20). The Directory of Publishing in Scotland for 1989 lists just one agent and in 2004 this number had risen to three. This is explained by the fact that literary agency flourishes where the bulk of publishers operate and within the UK this has been London. Latterly, however, the establishment of publishing companies within Scotland such as Mainstream, Canongate, Polygon and Birlinn bodes well for an increasing cultural market and native authorial confidence.

Giles Gordon Giles Gordon (1940–2003) was born and educated in Edinburgh where, after a brief spell at the Edinburgh College of Art studying book design, he worked for two years with Oliver & Boyd. After leaving for London in 1962 he continued to work in publishing in a variety of occupations, firstly as advertising manager and commissioner of jackets at Secker & Warburg (1962–4), then as an editor at Hutchinson (1964–6) before becoming an

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editor of plays, sociology and business books at Penguin (1966–7) and finally working for Gollancz as editorial director (1967–72). While at Gollancz, Gordon published a number of Scottish authors, notably commissioning George Mackay Brown in 1969 to write An Orkney Tapestry for which he o≠ered an advance of £250, as well as persuading Iain Crichton Smith to write what was to become Consider the Lilies in 1968 (Gordon 1993: 96). When he decided to cease working in publishing, he joined Anthony Shiel Associates as a literary agent holding the view that authors were increasingly poorly paid and treated by publishers. This was at a time when publishing houses were starting to merge and form the basis of many of the conglomerates of today, a consequence being the further erosion of author/publisher relations: It was easier for authors and publishers to seem to be partners when publishers owned and ran their own establishments. Now they mostly do not, and those who do, almost without exception, are undercapitalised. Thus they cannot . . . treat the author as a favoured citizen. Hence . . . the irresistible rise of the literary agent. (Gordon 1993: 198) While working as an agent in London throughout the 1970s he also wrote six novels and three books of short stories, and edited several other collections. With experience as both publisher and author Gordon was ideally qualified to make pronouncements on the publisher–author relationship: ‘[A]uthors need agents as bu≠ers between themselves and publishers, so that when money has to be discussed they do not have to behave as tradesmen do∞ng their caps . . . to those gracious enough to employ them’, calling authors ‘docile, even servile’ when it came to financial matters (198). In terms of the intermediary position of the agent, he exemplified this with his shrewd awareness of the market value for both imaginative and factual material. On the one hand he was one of the first wave of agents to negotiate large advances from publishers. In 1989 he secured £650,000 for Peter Ackroyd’s biographies of Dickens and William Blake and he sold to Little, Brown in 2003, Vikram Seth’s then-to-bewritten memoir Two Lives for £1.3m. Such large advances, albeit atypical and uncommon, are testimony to the view that without the negotiating skills of the literary agent, publishers would pay for books with much more modest sums. On the other hand he also suggested potential work to authors that he would eventually sell to publishers, as in 1987 when he persuaded Peter Wright to write the notorious Spycatcher, and when, in 1982, he encouraged Sue Townsend to develop a radio sketch that became The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole. Throughout his career as a literary agent Gordon had approximately eighty clients on his ‘list’ among whom were Fay Weldon, Allan Massie,

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Alan Spence, Alanna Knight and the Prince of Wales. After leaving Shiel Land in 1995 he joined Curtis Brown and returned to Edinburgh where he set up their Scottish o∞ce, a move welcomed by many at the time and seen to be a much-needed boost for Scottish publishing. Simon Ward

The commercial market for Scottish authors Such, then, were the conditions for a great number of writers securing the necessary means by which they could a≠ord to live by authorship at the beginning of the twentieth century. Scottish authors were further handicapped by the fact that London publishers dominated the book trade – a matter to be overcome if a budding author wanted to achieve anything more than regional success. The mass of popular fiction produced in Scotland at this time was confined to the weekly and penny press, in such publications as the Dundee-produced People’s Journal and People’s Friend, which relied upon a large working-class readership. Opportunities still existed for authors to write and be published: in 1900, the People’s Friend introduced a fixed payment for contributions o≠ering up to £100 for a serial novel and ten guineas for a short story. However, following the drift south of Scottish publishing houses throughout the nineteenth century, Scotland had become ‘relatively insignificant as a market for books’ (Donaldson 1986: 146). With the mass market for fiction and ‘class consolidation . . . [bringing] a corresponding solidification of literary genres’ (Bloom: 13), there existed greater opportunities for commercial enterprise. Fresh literary talent was constantly sought to cater for the new reading tastes and William Robertson Nicoll (1851–1923) summed up the publisher’s speculative outlook: ‘The great di≠erence between publishing in 1886 and publishing in 1910 is that in the former year the author was still seeking the publisher, whereas in the latter year the publisher is seeking the author’ (Darlow: 334). Nicoll, while working in London as advisor to Hodder & Stoughton and as editor of several Nonconformist magazines, was quick to create and exploit a new genre of fiction that was characterised by Scottish rural sentimentalism and pre-industrial nostalgia. The ‘Kailyard’ (as it came to be known) ‘was a fresh type of Scottish literature’ and to feed it Nicoll enlisted ‘able recruits from the ranks of the new journalism’ (Darlow: 329; 327). Thus began the careers of many authors, notably J. M. Barrie (1860–1937), John Watson [‘Ian Maclaren’] (1850–1907) and

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S. R. Crockett (1859–1914), ‘the first generation of professional novelists to grow up in Scotland . . . [b]ut the audience lived elsewhere’ (Donaldson: 146). While much of the literature written in the Scottish press was done so either in broad Scots or local vernacular, the Kailyardists expressed themselves in softer, more sanitised, Scots and ‘dialect speech’ (Blake: 49). Despite its popularity with a large readership it was also something of a barrier, and Crockett would have been ‘happy writing entirely in Scots, if that had been financially possible’ (Donaldson 1989: 257–8). Neil Munro (1863–1930) was also aware of its financial risks when o≠ering a story to William Blackwood: ‘It should appeal to the English readers even more than the Lowland Scots stories, for it dispenses almost entirely with dialect, at all events a glossary is unnecessary’ (Lendrum: 59–60). Initially, the books that bore the Kailyard stamp were sketches and short stories that had previously appeared in Nicoll’s magazines which were then collected and issued in one volume at 6s. Later, when the sketches were replaced by full-length stories, the novels were serialised before volume publication. They all enjoyed considerable success in the UK, North America and Australia: Maclaren’s Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush (1894) had sold 256,000 copies in Britain and 484,000 in America by 1907, while Crockett’s The Lilac Sunbonnet (1894), previously serialised in the Christian Leader, had sold out of its first edition of 10,000 on the day of issue. His The Grey Man (1896) had pre-publication orders totalling 45,000. Popularity for the author also brought with it extraliterary opportunities, such as the lecture tour. Watson, a Free Church minister before he started writing, had kept his place in the ministry and, in 1896, toured the United States giving ninety-six lectures, although the subject was preaching and not his fiction. Ill-health forced him to decline an o≠er of $24,000 for a further tour of twelve weeks. Crockett, also a Free Church minister, was likewise invited to tour but he too refused an o≠er of £6,000. Popularity for the Kailyard quickly declined and while Barrie turned to drama to continue making his fortune, Crockett, having decided to leave the ministry in 1894 after the success of his early stories, was forced to keep producing sub-standard books and hack journalistic pieces. The advances on several of his later novels had not ‘earned out’ and, because he had thus been ‘overpaid’ by £648 3s 6d, Hodder & Stoughton (having acquired the copyrights from T. Fisher Unwin) were forced to issue 1s and 6d editions of his previous books. His agent, A. P. Watt, had to negotiate the royalty rates on these later publications which were placed against the unearned advances.

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Interlude: Neil Munro and John Buchan A brief glimpse at the literary output and careers of Munro and Buchan will provide an illuminating overview of the market and economics so far covered. Among the earliest publications by Neil Munro (1863–1930) are stories and articles, written while working as a journalist in Glasgow in the early 1890s, which were sent to periodicals such as Cassell’s, Black and White and the Globe. He contributed them for several months and, as was common at the time, they were printed anonymously with each earning him ‘a guinea’. Although he later admitted that he then wrote to a ‘formula’ he was also keen to be taken seriously: ‘Finding myself in danger of being regarded as an earnest adherent of the Kailyard school, I switched o≠ ’ (Lendrum: 55). These were followed by more substantial stories to the Speaker and the National Observer, such as ‘The Secret of the Heather-Ale’ in 1892 for which he received £4 – more than his weekly journalistic wage. His first serial story (‘The Afton Moor Mystery’) was published in 1893 in Quips, running for thirteen weeks and earning him £26. In 1893–4 he began a long association with Blackwoods which was interested in what he could o≠er the Maga. William Blackwood wrote to him: If you will send me everything else you have written beyond what I have accepted for the Magazine, I shall see about publishing the sketches in book form and to give you the chance of attracting the attention of the public . . . I am willing to undertake the risk of such a volume to sell at say 3s 6d, and should there be any profits I shall divide them equally with you. (Lendrum: 61) The book that resulted was The Lost Pibroch & Other Sheiling Stories (1896) for which his profits after the first year were £4 13s 4d, increasing to £146 in 1898. Munro was soon introduced to David Storrar Meldrum, Blackwood’s literary advisor in London, to whom he would post his monthly instalments. Once John Splendid had been serialised it was published as a book in 1898 for which Munro received a royalty of 2d in the shilling on the selling price. It was also his first work to appear in America and was both serialised and published by Dodd, Mead & Co. His growing popularity was thereafter reflected in his earnings, for in 1898 his income was £1,400 of which only £150 had come from journalism. His novels would always appear as serials, either in Maga or Good Words, and were frequently published in North America and the colonies. For Doom Castle (serialised in 1901, published in 1902), his fourth novel, he received £400 for the serial rights from Blackwoods and a royalty of 1s

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3d ‘on the first 3,000 with increases thereafter’ (Lendrum: 101). His loyalty to Blackwoods as publishers for his novels is shown in his refusal of an o≠er from A. Constable & Co. in October 1900 for an advance of £400 and a 27.5 per cent royalty on his next book The Shores of Fortune (1901). Despite his successes Munro was still employed as a part-time journalist on the Glasgow News and from his weekly column ‘The Looker-On’ came, in 1902, ‘Erchie MacPherson’ – a series of ‘imaginary conversations’ in which topical issues of the day were humorously discussed between the beadle of a local church and several comic characters (Lendrum: 126–7). In 1904 Blackwood wrote explaining that they were going to print 100,000 copies of Erchie: My Droll Friend with a 20 per cent royalty on the selling price of 1s, rising to 25 per cent if reprinted. The success led to further similar characters that were to appear initially in either the Glasgow Evening News or the People’s Friend: ‘Para Handy’ in 1905 and ‘Jimmy Swan’ in 1911. Once each series had run its course in the press, Blackwoods would publish a cheap edition to catch the popular market on which Munro would receive 10 per cent royalty. His last novel, The New Road, was published in 1914 and by 1917 Blackwoods still had the copyright in all his books. Munro was keen to see a cheap edition of all his books as until then his novels were available only in 6s editions. He wrote to George Blackwood of his proposal and his long-held conviction that ‘we have for a good many years failed to take much advantage of the popular market into which practically all the other fiction writers of the country put their books within two or three years of their first publication’ (Lendrum: 221). Blackwood replied that he was also keen for the reissue but due to paper restrictions the firm was not in a position to do so. The new editions were not issued but at the time of his death in 1930 all his books were still in print. The writing career of John Buchan (1875–1940) spanned forty-five years and consisted of an output more diverse in form and content than that of any other Scottish author before or since. Together with over thirty novels and collections of short stories he wrote in other fields, including history, military history, essays, biography and poetry. His career began while still at university where he contributed stories and journalistic pieces to magazines such as the Yellow Book, Macmillan’s, Chambers’ Journal and the Maga as well as publishing his first two novels, Sir Quixote of the Moors (1896) and John Burnet of Barns (1898). He sold the serial rights to the latter to John Lane and even at this early stage employed A. P. Watt as his literary agent: ‘I shall keep to Lane, but never for a moment go below ten per cent royalty, which is as much as I could get through Watt’ (Smith 1965: 104). Despite many

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occupations throughout his life, including the bar, an editorial position on the Spectator, as a journalist, and as a director of Nelsons, it was as an author that Buchan made his reputation. His ‘first real success as a novelist’ was Prester John (1910), serialised in the boys’ monthly The Captain (Lownie: 111). To capitalise on this he wrote another story in a similar style, serialised in Blackwood’s in 1913, and published in 1916 as The Power-House. Until 1915 his seventeen previous books (including his non-fiction) had never sold more than 2,000 copies and his literary income had principally been from the sale of serial rights and small advances with a ‘usual’ 10 per cent royalty. A wider audience was soon reached with the more commercial themes of drama and excitement, striking the rich vein of popular taste. In 1915 he sent The Thirty-Nine Steps to Blackwood which, after serialisation between July and September, sold 25,000 by the end of the year and 34,000 more in 1916. The success prompted the release of The Power-House (selling 26,000 in six months) and also prompted the publishers of his other books to re-release them now his name was recognisable. The formula in The Thirty-Nine Steps was one he would return to four more times with ‘Richard Hannay’ and again in further ‘shockers’ (as he termed them) with his other central protagonists, ‘Dickson McCunn’ and ‘Edward Leithen’. These books would usually come out on a yearly basis with a typical publication procedure: serialisation in a magazine followed by publication as a novel (at 7s 6d); eighteen months later there would be a cheap edition at 3s 6d (both published by Hodder & Stoughton), with a uniform edition published by Nelsons a year after that at 4s 6d. The success of his ‘shockers’ had a consequent e≠ect on his royalty payments not only for those books but also for the rest of his literary output. A royalty of 12.5 per cent was received from Blackwood’s for The Thirty-Nine Steps, but its popularity enabled Buchan to raise this to 30 per cent for Greenmantle (1916) from Hodder & Stoughton; for Mr Standfast (1919) he obtained 25 per cent for the first 5,000 copies rising to 30 per cent for the next 15,000 and thereafter 33 per cent. For the later novels he would receive between 20 per cent and 25 per cent as a starting rate, to be capped at 30 per cent after the first 5,000 were sold. Such royalties are exceptional for a time when most authors could expect a maximum rate of 15 per cent. The advances Buchan received for his books were correspondingly large: between £750 and £1,000 for his novels and up to £2,000 for his biographies. It is testimony to his popularity as an author and, perhaps, a good agent that his publishers could a≠ord to o≠er such terms. With each of his novels selling in the tens of thousands each year his annual income from writing in 1919 was estimated to be £5,000, which was to double by 1935. After he resigned

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his directorship at Nelsons in 1929 he turned to journalism to ensure a salaried income. He wrote regularly for the Graphic and in 1930 took on a column in the Sunday Times that he kept until 1935.

New media: adaptations and opportunities The advent of new media in the early twentieth century presented a challenge to the integrity of copyright protection that had been in existence since 1842. The Copyright Act of 1911 was ‘hailed as the greatest single advance in the history of domestic copyright’ since texts could, in theory at least, be adapted to and communicated by media other than ‘the page and the stage’ (Bonham-Carter 1978: 216). After 1911 copyright would include such subsidiaries as recording, performance and film rights (after 1959 coverage would also extend to ‘broadcasts and television’ (208)) and protection would last for the author’s life plus an additional fifty years (extended to seventy in 1996). From now on, copyright infringement would be more of a threat to an author than outright piracy. In much the same way that the Society of Authors formed to help protect and further the interests of authors, so each medium soon had its own trade union: the League of Dramatists from 1931, the Screenwriters’ Association from 1937 (to become the Screenwriters’ Guild in 1961) and the Radio Writers’ Association from 1947. Initial fears over the perceived threat that these new forms of entertainment would have on books (and authors by extension) were soon discovered to be unfounded and it was not really until mid-century that authors could profitably benefit from them. The cinema, radio and television could further an author’s income in either of two ways: media companies could buy the rights to a work, or writers could seek gainful employment by working for such companies. Work could include adaptations of one’s own book or play (or that of another), submissions of original scripts, or a commission to write new dramas and serials. During the Second World War, for example, Eric Linklater (1899–1974) wrote The Cornerstones (1941), a short conversation-piece, that was successfully adapted and broadcast on radio, for which he received thirty guineas and a commission for three more pieces. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s John Buchan’s estate could benefit from additional income as several of his adventures were adapted and serialised on the radio. There has never been any standardised fee for ‘one or other categories of radio scripting and broadcasting’, but a table of minimum terms for use of published work was established in 1923. There were also various rates that had been set and which tended to increase (if

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only slightly) after annual negotiation by the BBC and writers’ representatives. Remuneration from radio work was usually paid per minute with di≠erent rates depending on the status of the author (‘beginner’ or ‘established’) and the originality of the material (specially written or previously published). In 1966 a specially written sound drama by a beginner lasting for thirty minutes would earn forty-five guineas, whereas an established author would earn sixty guineas (‘Radio’ 1966: 29). In 1984 the fees for a performance of specially written radio dramas were £12.35 a minute for beginners and £18.65 for established writers, while a short story lasting fifteen minutes (about 2,500 words) would earn £66 (The Writers’ 1984: 223). All fees, however, were subject to negotiation and repeats would provide 75 per cent of the original fee. Television has likewise provided an opportunity for both commissioned and original material but, unlike radio, there is also the possibility of sale to foreign TV markets. Similar genres exist to those in radio but with a higher rate of pay. The benefits of trade unionism (such as going on strike) were, in the 1960s, a means to strengthen the cause for securing basic terms and conditions, an advantage that does not apply in the ‘world of books’ (Bonham-Carter 1984: 287). With a strengthened position from which to bargain, success was met when the ‘going rate’ of pay for an established writer of a sixty-minute ‘teleplay’ rose from £650 in 1971 to £3,450 (both for the BBC) in 1982. Similar to writing for radio, however, there are still di≠ering rates of pay relative to the status of the writer. It seems the best an established author or playwright could hope for, assuming they want to realise more money from an existing piece of work and not seek supplementary employment as a ‘jobbing scriptwriter’, would be the sale of TV and broadcast rights – an issue dependent on the popularity of the book or play, for example, and the negotiation skills of the literary agent. In stark contrast to the broadcast media is the much more rewarding film industry. Despite the relative decline in cinema attendances after the institution of television as a means of spending leisure time, Hollywood in the 1950s and 1960s was still buying the film rights in many bestselling novels originating in the UK. As a provider of ‘quick entertainment’, the popular genres in fiction readily lent themselves to adaptation for the big screen. John Buchan failed to cash in as he might have when he sold the film rights to The Thirty-Nine Steps to Gaumont Pictures for a modest £800 in 1934. One author who proceeded to amass a large fortune through the sale of film and TV rights was Alistair Maclean (1922–87). The serialisation and film rights for his best-selling first novel, HMS Ulysses (1956), earned him £50,000 while, during the

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1970s when he worked the US, he was paid $25,000 ‘for each television film made from one of his stories and a further $25,000 for any which went into cinema release’ (Webster: 217). One novella, Air Force One is Down, earned him $80,000 (it was later filmed, in the 1990s). These are just some examples of books (and subsequent sale of film and TV rights) that, in addition to being bestsellers, earned an author ‘somewhere around £20 million’ during a career that lasted thirty years (292). For authors not lucky enough to see their work adapted for the media there were to be two further means whereby income could be greatly increased by book sales: book club choice and paperback publication. The Book Society was established in 1929 as an early form of ‘direct selling’ to members who would often be induced to order a book a month on the recommendation of a ‘literary expert’ (Feather: 87; Baker: 121). Other clubs followed, such as Gollancz’s Left Book Club in 1936 and the Reprint Society in 1939. Clubs would order stock direct from publishers, usually receiving a larger discount than bookshops, and would sell to their customers at full price. With membership in the tens of thousands, the royalties on sales, if the book was selected, could make a substantial di≠erence. Morning Tide was a Book Society Choice for Neil Gunn (1891–1973) in 1930 and earned him £725 the following year and Wild Geese Overhead was chosen in 1939. In 1937 his Highland River nearly had greater success: ‘I should probably have been chosen by the English Book Society . . . [but Sean O’Faolain] postponed decision for three months and then finally recommended. Had they chosen, their first order would have been 75,000, and my fortune would have been assured!’ (qtd in Gunn: 53). Eric Linklater also came to appreciate this essential di≠erence when his The Dark of Summer was a Book Society Recommendation in 1956, although it was soon reprinted as a Popular Book Club Choice in 1958. The arrival of the paperback in the 1930s as a format for books occasioned more financial opportunities for authors by not only extending the ‘shelf life’ of a particular title but also introducing such books to a wider market. Of the first ten titles to appear as Penguins in 1935, six had originally appeared as Jonathan Cape hardbacks (Linklater’s Poet’s Pub among them). They were cheaper to produce, had print runs in the thousands, a low selling price (originally 6d) and were sold in ‘non-traditional’ retailers such as newsagents, railway and (later) airport bookstalls and supermarkets (Feather: 213), much like other commodities. Until the late 1970s it was common practice for a hardback publisher to license (for a specified period) the paperback rights to a mass-market publisher with the proceeds split between publisher and author (on a 50/50 basis), that also applied to any advance paid by the

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paperback publisher as well as to income from royalties (usually 7.5 per cent rising to 10 per cent). Paperback publication would tend to be between a year and eighteen months after initial appearance so as to maximise sales for the hardback publisher and ensure a reasonable return on their investment. ‘Paperback rights’ soon entered authors’ contracts as a matter of course as it meant greater income to the original publisher as much as it did to the author. It helped if the book had the promise of a bestseller for then the paperback rights could also be sold to foreign markets. Not only did this mean more money for the author but guarantees of such sales before hardback publication often determined whether or not the book would actually be published. The cheaper costs of the format can also ‘resurrect’ out of print books that often experience periods of renascent interest, such as the Canongate Classics, with speed of delivery and low overhead production costs serving as ready means to reinvigorate an author’s back list.

A∞liated sources of income Besides the straightforward sale of books and subsidiary rights there are a number of sources of additional income open to authors. Prizes (thirteen listed in the 2004 Directory of Publishing in Scotland) provide not only a welcome cash sum but a boost in sales and, as is increasingly the case, media exposure. The oldest of the UK literary prizes is the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (administered by Edinburgh University and first awarded in 1919) for a work of fiction and biography. Neil Gunn won it in 1937 for Highland River and received a cheque for £186, while in 2004 its worth had increased to £3,000. The Saltire Society also o≠er two annual literary awards for Scottish Book of the Year (£5,000) and Scottish First Book (£1,500) with Alasdair Gray’s Lanark winning the inaugural award in 1981. The most lucrative are those awarded by the Scottish Arts Council which include three Children’s Book Awards as well as a Scottish Book of the Year (£10,000). Awards for first books are perhaps the greatest boosts for authors seeking a career in writing as they can, if nothing else, attract publishers’ attention. One such author who met his first success in this way was Alexander McCall Smith who, in 1977, won £500 and publication for his manuscript of a children’s book when he won an Edinburgh contest run by Chambers. To older authors there is the possibility of financial aid when they cannot rely on their work to provide enough for subsistence and are without private means or a supplementary income to fall back on. The Royal Literary Fund was established in 1790 (receiving royal patronage

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in 1842) to help authors who have ‘reduced earnings . . . and increased liabilities’ and is funded from subscriptions, donations and legacies. Candidates need to have proven ‘literary merit’ while ‘the storm signal that an author is in distress is often run up by a fellow-writer’ (Smith 2005). Recipients have included James Hogg, Burns’ widow, and D. H. Lawrence, and the fund is still very much in operation with 211 grants and pensions awarded in 2003–4 throughout the UK. There is also the possibility of a Civil List pension, administered by the national government, for which potential recipients also need to be nominated. Neil Gunn had helped Marian McNeill, Willa Muir and C. M. Grieve receive such a pension. He was dismissive of the same prospect for himself: ‘That is the good and proper end for all true literary ladies and gents. But for the casuals or casualties of the literary fringe like you and me, it’s the commercial world and never say die’ (Hart: 261). In 1979 authors throughout the UK finally became legally entitled to income accrued as a result of library borrowings of their books. The Society of Authors fought a long campaign to secure some form of remuneration for authors who only receive the royalty on one sale of a book to a library, even though the copy itself may be borrowed many times. Public Lending Right is the process whereby the total number of loans of authors’ works is calculated on the basis of figures supplied to a central database (on which is kept a register of recorded authors and books) from a number of sample libraries across the UK. Each loan was worth 2.07 pence in 1998 and all sums are distributed from a central fund (£4,903,000 in 1997–8) (The Writers’ 1998: 610). Payment is made once a year and can range anywhere between £1 and £6,000. In the twelve months to July 2004 Ian Rankin’s A Question of Blood was the most borrowed book from Scottish libraries.

Post-1980: the economics of modern (Scottish) authorship The conglomerates that began to evolve during the 1980s heralded changes in publishing that were to have profound e≠ects on the careers and profitability of many authors, and Scottish authors in particular. Independent and family-owned publishing houses were increasingly bought and subsumed within large multinational concerns to exist as imprints, a process known as ‘vertical integration’ (Greenfield: 137). An example of this is a company owning both hardback and paperback firms: ‘[W]hat a publisher wants these days is access to book rights, and these are obviously easier to get if they are in-house. You must also remember that rights are only leased, not owned’ (Mayer, qtd in

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Greenfield: 144). Financially for an author this would result in, among other things, keeping all royalties earned (save their agent’s 10 per cent commission), as they would not have to split it with the hardback publisher. But economics and potential for profit would come to dominate all publishing decisions. With more capital publishers can a≠ord to (virtually have to, given the extent of competition between companies) publish more titles year-on-year as a means of increasing chances of ‘striking it rich’. Publishers cannot now a≠ord to take as many risks as they used to, since such gambles can prove too costly in the long run. Whereas previously an author would build up a positive and ‘nurturing’ relationship with the house editor or literary advisor, often the closest relations in modern publishing are between author and agent as the latter begin to occupy more roles (a further indication of the indispensability of literary agents). The ‘oven-ready’ manuscript takes less time to publish and is more commercial than a literary idea with mere potential. Contracts for books become shorter with the norm being ‘two-book deals’, largely so that publishers can further cash in on a successful first novel while they are also able quickly to ‘drop’ the author should the book not prove popular. A publisher’s list, rather than reflecting an editor’s or owner’s tastes or ‘style’, comes to be no more than an itemisation of bestsellers. Advances to authors can be very large, often achieved through the purchase of as many subsidiary rights as possible, such as UK and Commonwealth, world, foreign, serial, film and merchandising (as the case may be). These few books will have a large advertising and marketing budget, will be sent to as many reviewers as possible, and submitted for as many popular literary awards as it is eligible for since now ‘the major literary award has become a sub-species of marketing technique’ (Bloom: 82). In such situations rarely does the advance earn out. All are measures to further the chances of capturing the popular market, creating a blockbuster, and by doing so, turning the author into a bankable celebrity. Such a situation is most likely to occur with firsttime authors as they have no previous track record or reputation that may prove hard for a publisher to slough o≠.

Authorship in 2001 In 2001 the Scottish Arts Council (SAC) commissioned a study of the then current state of authorship in Scotland, and 217 writers based in Scotland responded to a questionnaire-based survey of their earnings and attitudes towards funding. The sample split 58 per cent/41 per cent (1 per cent nonresponse) male/female while 73 per cent were aged between 35 and 64. The

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sample, therefore, chiefly contained experienced writers, that is, those who had been earning money from their writing for more than ten years, and indeed 40 per cent had been writing for more than twenty years. Thirtythree per cent had published between one and four works during their career while 24 per cent had published between ten and twenty-four. Thirteen authors had published between twenty-five and fifty works while fourteen had published more than fifty. For almost 45 per cent of the sample, freelance writing represented their main source of income although most of these supplemented their earnings from other sources such as a partner’s income or a pension. (The majority of the balance of 55 per cent were in full-time employment or retired.) Although the individuals were not necessarily identical, the same percentage of the sample, almost 45 per cent, had given up salaried employment to be a freelance writer and most felt themselves worse o≠ as a result of that decision. Of the total sample 42 per cent had dependants reliant on their income; 62 per cent of the sample did not contribute to a personal pension scheme. Only 18 per cent believed that they earned a living wage from freelance writing. Given the actual levels of income, what authors themselves perceived as a ‘living wage’ was likely to be well below the then average UK wage of £22,000 or even the minimum wage of £7,696. Thirtyone per cent earned less than £1,000 per annum from writing; 27 per cent earned between £1,000 and £4,999; and 40 per cent earned over £5,000. Forty-two per cent of those in the less-than-£1,000 category had been writing for more than twenty years which is testimony to their dedication or boneheadedness. Just as impressive was the statistic that 36 per cent of this category had given up a full-time salary to become writers. The full breakdown of all earnings directly from writing was: Table 5.1 Breakdown of Authors’ Earnings.

£0–999 £1,000–4,999 £5,000–9,999 £10,000–19,999 £20,000–29,999 £30,000–39,999 £40,000–49,999 £50,000–74,999 £75,000–99,999 £100,000⫹ No answer

Number of writers

% of sample

67 59 29 24 13 5 4 3 2 6 5

30.88 27.19 13.36 11.06 5.99 2.30 1.84 1.38 0.92 2.76 2.30

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Most of the sample’s income from writing, about 55 per cent, was derived from books while a further 20 per cent came from newspapers and magazines, covering journalism, reviewing and fiction. Radio represented an important source of secondary income for many writers. This reinforces the finding that the major form of writing was fiction, with crime fiction constituting a strong sub-category. Poetry was a runner-up in terms of forms of writing but was unsurprisingly a poor source of income. Most poets fell into the less than £1,000 category while the highest earners concentrated on fiction and general non-fiction. About half of the sample admitted to undertaking less attractive literary activities to subsidise the work that they really enjoyed doing; over half admitted to marginalising some areas of their writing because not enough of an income flowed from them. ‘A reasonable number of writers reckoned that all (15.21%) or almost all (16.59%) of their works [had] earned out their advances; however, 23.04% of writers were not paid an advance for their work’ (Bone: 12). Most of the respondents reported that advances had either increased or remained unchanged over the previous five years. The (mode) average advance was between £1,000 and £5,000 while the (mode) average time spent to produce the work was up to a year. Mode is more significant here than mean as far as advances were concerned since the mean of £18,756 was much higher due to one author receiving an advance of £1,200,000. There seemed to have been little change, too, over the same period as far as the di∞culty of finding an outlet for work in magazines was concerned. Indeed, an encouraging note in the survey was that it had become easier to place material in Scottish magazines than elsewhere and this may be testimony to the role of the SAC in encouraging the development of magazines and the payment of contributors. A less encouraging note was that it did seem to the respondents that it had become more di∞cult to have books published than it had been five years previously and more di∞cult in Scotland than elsewhere. This may be due to the contraction of publishing in Scotland, particularly for fiction, noted elsewhere in this volume. In turn, it might explain why almost half of the authors in the survey had an agent and of these 59 per cent felt they had benefited as a result. Of those earning more than £5,000 seventy-two per cent had an agent while only 21 per cent of those earning less than £1,000 did so. It cannot, however, be determined if having an agent makes a writer more successful or being successful leads to a writer employing an agent. Few of the sample had paid for publication; even so, of those who had, half had managed to make a profit. The writers in this survey were ‘cautiously optimistic about their futures and about the current profile of literature in Scotland’ (Bone: 38). Many looked to Ireland in terms of advocating tax exemption for writers and a form of national academy or ‘aosdána’ as a means of giving the profession

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more economic security and public recognition. However, to the disinterested observer, it will be clear that only a minority of writers achieve su∞cient commercial success for authorship to compete with other forms of employment. Instead, it is the intangible satisfactions of publication, ranging from egotism to the altruism of creating a social benefit, that must account for the majority’s motivation to write. Alistair McCleery

Contemporary Scottish authors, such as Ian Rankin, Alexander McCall Smith and A. L. Kennedy, have the capital of large UK publishers helping them reach a wider market. But they too were once a ‘gamble’; a gamble taken initially by Scottish publishers and one that helped them on their respective careers. Both Rankin and Kennedy were first published by Polygon (McCall Smith still is) but money and lack of adequate distribution took them south. As Kennedy explained in 2000, having had her first book, Night Geometry and the Garscadden Trains, published in 1990: ‘I don’t publish in Scotland . . . It’s a long, old argument. If you are trying to earn a living out of writing you need your books to be distributed, and the Scottish publishers don’t distribute the books. Your books don’t get into bookshops and you don’t get paid an adequate advance’ (Scotsman, S2 Supplement, 24 October 2000: 3). Polygon also published The Flood by Rankin in 1986 and he too followed opportunity: ‘I came to the decision that I didn’t want to spend half my life hectoring the SAC for hand-outs, or subsisting on three figure advances . . . when an agent came calling, I told her about my next project, a novel featuring an Edinburgh cop called Rebus. She took it to London. I followed soon after’ (SPA 2004: 150). A. L. Kennedy has subsequently been taken up by Jonathan Cape for publication in hardback and Vintage for paperback (both part of Random House), while Rankin has been published by Orion (part of Hachette) for his John Rebus novels. His sales also show the commercial reality that lies with success in a genre (crime) as his novels now sell 500,000 worldwide in paperback within three months of publication. Such popularity enabled him to earn a £1.3 m advance for two books in 2003, ‘with additional money in the USA for the same two books’ (Plain: 128). Now a successful ‘brand name’, his regular appearances on television and radio as well as continued exposure in the local and national press help keep his name before the public. Kennedy is all too aware of the need for regular publicity and the initiative that an author has sometimes to take: [N]ow there’s so much commercial pressure to get any book to have many sales, you really must do something that is

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promotional . . . Publishers [are] not really geared up to support you . . . besides, there’s a clause in the contract that you sign which says you would do anything reasonable to promote the book. (Neagu: 111) She is also an example of a marketable literary author, a fact not lost on her publishers or the covers of her books, as her novels and short stories have either won or been nominated for awards thirteen times since 1990 and helped her to earn, together with journalistic work, £35,000 in 2004. Although McCall Smith is still published by Polygon in hardback for his popular No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, Abacus (Time Warner) have bought the paperback rights. This together with the sale of foreign rights has helped his worldwide sales ‘double to more than six million’ and earn an estimated £950,000 in 2004, making him currently Scotland’s best-selling writer. However exceptional, these authors exemplify the rewards derived from writing and the complex nature that the sale of various forms of literary property has come to assume. Despite the fact that success in a large market is only becoming possible with enough initial capital from large well-financed multinational publishing conglomerates, it also shows the need for publishers continually to take risks if a country’s authors are to have any chance of similar success and thereby ensure the vitality of its publishing industry.

Readers and Reading David Finkelstein Radical changes in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Scottish book culture and publishing infrastructure, charted elsewhere in this volume, concurred with the rise of an increasingly literate reading public, particularly following the introduction of universal primary schooling in Scotland after 1872. The intertwining of demand and supply had consequences for Scottish society. As literacy rates rose and demand for reading sources increased, so too did the pressure for publicly funded library provision, stimulated and linked to concurrent developments of privately funded library and book circulating systems across Scotland (discussed in John Crawford’s contributions to this volume). Contributors to Volume 3 of the Edinburgh History of the Book have pointed out that by the mid-nineteenth century, restrictions on the production of print had been lifted in a way that stimulated cheaper and faster production and consumption of print: ‘Taxes on Knowledge’ had been repealed by 1861; the Education Acts of 1870 and 1872 in England, Wales and Scotland established the principle of free, publicly funded education for all qualifying youngsters; private philanthropy or socially motivated initiatives, and after 1850 and 1853 public authorities subscribing to the Public Libraries Acts in England and Scotland, underpinned the subsequent establishment of a network of reading spaces to cater for the rising number of literate readers in Britain; and faster modes of transport by rail and steam boat enabled swifter delivery of print from producer to consumer. As railway networks expanded, reading became a preferred method of passing the time on train journeys. In Scotland, John Menzies recognised a market opportunity and like his English-based contemporary W. H. Smith, began opening station bookshops from 1857 onwards to cater for this new demand. 431

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By the end of the nineteenth century, literacy rates across Western European nations had risen steadily to approximately 90 per cent of their populations, primarily through active state intervention (Monaghan 1989; Fischer 2003). In Scotland, literacy rates amongst men and women, always above average in comparison to European and English counterparts, saw steady improvement to near universal literacy, as the comparative information in Table 5.2. demonstrates. Table 5.2 Literacy of Brides and Bridegrooms, 1875–1900 (Percentage able to sign names). Scotland

England and Wales

Date

Men

Women

Men

Women

1875 1880 1885 1890 1895 1900

91 92 94 96 97 98

83 85 89 93 95 97

83 86 89 93 96 97

77 81 87 92 95 97

Source: Anderson 1995: 305.

Such statistical proof of literacy must be read cautiously, of course. As Chartier has pointed out (1989), being able to sign one’s name was not necessarily conclusive proof that one could read proficiently. However, other evidence exists to suggest that levels of education and reading attainment across all classes in Scotland improved substantially over the decades. Census returns between 1871 and 1901, for example, note a proportional increase in numbers of individuals per 1,000 head of population a∞rming successful completion of primary and to a certain extent secondary education, as per the following table: Table 5.3 Census Returns Noting Persons in Receipt of Education. Year

Category

Total

per 1,000 population

1871

Age 0–15 All ages Age 0–15 All ages Age 0–15 All ages Age 0–15 All ages

552,060 574,121 689,466 720,099 760,417 783,67 849,703 873,028

164 171 185 193 189 195 190 195

1881 1891 1901

Source: Anderson 1995: 233.

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Figure 5.4 The Ladies’ Edinburgh Magazine.

John Crawford discusses elsewhere in this volume the development of Scottish library provision over the twentieth century. An unusual by-product of expansion was the attention paid by public authorities to providing specialist facilities for women readers. The level of such

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provision rose between 1850 and the outbreak of the First World War: by 1914 about 206 of 560 local government authorities in Britain provided dedicated space for women in their libraries, of which thirty-five had separate facilities in one or more of their branches, and 180 had discrete reading rooms. The facilities and material o≠ered in such places ranged considerably, as did the numbers of readers patronising them. Glasgow, for example, provided a separate Ladies’ Reading Room, which in 1901 catered for seventy readers, in contrast to its General Reading Room, which served 150 (Baggs: 282). The type of material set aside for women readers reflected male librarian views of suitability and relevance: surveys of the top twenty newspaper and periodical titles available to women in these reading rooms show the favouring of titles such as The Queen newspaper, Gentlewoman, The Lady’s Pictorial and Lady’s Realm (Baggs: 298–300). Yet regional di≠erences and interests were also catered for. Aberdeen libraries carried Bon Accord, Lady’s Illustrated Weekly (also known as Scots Pictorial) and the Scottish published Onward and Upward, while Perth stocked the Scottish Women’s Temperance News. Such facilities declined or were closed after the end of the First World War, in part due to decisions to utilise such areas to meet increased demands for children’s libraries, but also due to increasing pressure from patrons to desegregate gendered reading spaces.

Ladies’ Edinburgh Debating Society The Ladies’ Edinburgh Literary Society, as it was originally called, was formed in Edinburgh in 1865 by a group of young middle-class women led by Sarah Siddons Mair. They met every Saturday morning to discuss the books that they were reading. Core membership, originally drawn from attendees of a Mr Hunter’s ‘classes for girls’, soon expanded, and within a few months of founding the society’s members began producing a magazine for public distribution (The Attempt, published between 1865 and 1874). This was followed with a more professionally and commercially minded journal, The Ladies’ Edinburgh Magazine, which was produced monthly from 1875 to 1880. When the journal ceased publication in 1880, the organisation changed its name to the Ladies’ Edinburgh Debating Society, and began concentrating on debating and public speaking. During its remaining fifty-five years of existence, the organisation galvanised Edinburgh women through monthly engaged, vigorous and public debates. Initially these discussions were confined to literary subjects: literature, history, travel, music, architecture, painting. As one participant recalled: ‘Many exceptional debates come back to mind on such subjects as

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Jane Austen, Charles Lamb, Victorian Novelists, George Eliot, Meredith, Pepys and the Navy, Frederick the Great, Wordsworth, Shelley, Napoleon, where the speaking was of high level and the debating power considerable’ (Rae: 63). As the organisation grew in numbers and in confidence, discussions branched out to include contemporary issues such as the rights of women to vote and enter higher education, and the right to free primary education and health care. Strict rules on debating procedures were enforced, and minutes were kept recording titles of debates, who spoke for or against, the general vote for or against by members at the end, and notes on comments and interventions from the floor by those not directly involved in the o∞cial debate. Between 1880 and 1936 the society would host over 370 debates, with debate titles including: ‘Is it advisable that the kindergarten system should be introduced into our country?’ (1881, majority vote in the a∞rmative); ‘Is the present Poor Law system the most e≠ectual in relieving the poor?’ (1885, majority vote negative); ‘Are strikes on the whole beneficial to the community at large?’ (1890, majority vote in the a∞rmative); ‘Should there be a separate Parliament for Scotland?’ (1936, majority vote negative). Over 600 women would become members and participate in society activities throughout its seventy-year history, with membership never lower than 100 in any given year (Kelman: 201–27, 43). Key to the high rate of subsequent activism amongst its members was its communal, supportive and democratic structure. Run by members for its members, the society o≠ered a social space that allowed women to practise and develop skills crucial to their subsequent move from private to public arenas, regardless of political or social orientation. Many of the society’s members would later credit their success in the public sphere to the reflective and oratorical experience and skills they gained from participating in society activities and debates. As one memoirist noted, paying homage to the role of the Society’s founder in supporting the rhetorical training of fellow members: More than one woman in public life today owes, not only her position, but the fact that it is possible for her to hear the sound of her own voice raised on the public platform with qualms of mauvais honte to the gracious encouragement and subtle sympathy of Sarah Siddons Mair, always the ‘mirror of all courtesy’. (Rae: 23) Though small in size, the society’s influence was substantial, with its members at the forefront of social, literary, educational and philanthropic initiatives in Edinburgh. Its founder and later president, Sarah Siddons Mair (1846–1941), was one of the originators of the Ladies’ Edinburgh Educational Association (which fought for university

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education throughout the latter third of the nineteenth century), was involved in founding secondary schools and higher education colleges for girls and women, and played a significant role in the Scottish women’s su≠rage movement. Others such as Louisa Lumsden, Louisa and Flora Stevenson, Chrystal (Jessie) Macmillan and Frances Simson campaigned for the extension of medical and nursing education for women, were active as school governors, board members and university wardens and lecturers, or in the case of Eliza Wigham, ran a Penny Savings Bank supporting lower-class aspirations and finances. Other members drew on the radicalising experiences of their cultural encounters in the society to inspire themselves and their families to community-based, socially progressive work. Charlotte Carmichael, for example, wrote substantially and influentially on female su≠rage and women’s enfranchisement in the 1890s and 1900s, with her most significant work being her 1894 treatise on women’s rights, British Freewomen: Their Historical Privileges. Her daughter Marie Carmichael Stopes would pioneer British birth control initiatives in the twentieth century. The Ladies’ Edinburgh Debating Society played a similar role in Edinburgh to that of its better-known London counterparts the Langham Place Group (established in 1859 and active until 1866), the Kensington Ladies’ Discussion Society (founded in 1865 and including such members as Elizabeth Garrett, Sophie Jex-Blake, Frances Power Cobbe and Emily Davies), and the Pioneer Club (begun in 1892). Initially a private forum for the discussion and interpretation of books and print, as the Ladies’ Edinburgh Debating Society grew in numbers it expanded the range and skills of its members to encompass periodical production and oratorical self-expression, and from there encouraged them to enter into the public sphere as educational, social welfare, medical and political leaders and reformers. It is an important Scottish example of the radicalising e≠ect of a reading group on its members, and their subsequent commitment to late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Scottish social reform. David Finkelstein

Other reading room schemes aimed at working-class migrant workers in Scotland were established in the late nineteenth century by philanthropic and religious organisations. Chief among those o≠ering reading provision was the Scottish Navvy Mission Society, founded in the 1870s and active until 1913. The society worked with faith-based Protestant churches – the Church of Scotland, the Free Church of Scotland and the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland – to establish

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missions with reading room provision at worksites and labourer camps throughout Scotland. The earliest of these missions, noted in church records as ‘railway missions’, were closely associated with workers employed specifically in railway construction in the 1870s and 1880s. As large labour projects shifted in the late 1880s and 1890s to water work schemes, pipe track laying, public building and dock constructions, the society began establishing ‘navvy missions’, with missionaries, reading material and facilities paid for by churches applying for special grants from schemes run by the Highland Missions and Home Missions. Such site-based missions were often short-lived, built quickly and then closed after a year or two when workers moved on to other work sites. Some lasted for up to ten years, such as the missions established at Tweedsmuir and Rosyth. The number of such missions in operation peaked between 1901 and 1904, when an average of five new missions a year were begun. In total eighty-seven missions with reading rooms were funded between 1883 and 1913, o≠ering spaces for reading, recreation and letter writing. Few accounts exist of the general condition of these reading spaces, though mention is made of one at Tyndrum, ‘suitably furnished and free of debt’ (Holmes 2000–1: 77, 78), and others are reported sited at camps in Kinlochleven, Rosyth, Tweedsmuir, Grangemouth, Lochwinnoch, Auchindean, Blair Atholl, Lochearnhead and Wick, among many. The Scottish Navvy Mission also started reading rooms in Edinburgh and Glasgow in the 1900s, the latter at 7 High Street in 1908. The Glasgow room advertised itself as for the exclusive use of navvies and warned o≠ less desirable members of the public: ‘ “toe rags” and “corner boys” will not be welcomed,’ notices warned, ‘but navvies and steam men will always find a friend here’ (Holmes 2000–1: 80). Reading material stocked by these missions ranged from site to site, though common to all was the emphasis on religious matter: Tyndrum stocked monthly religious periodicals, illustrated papers and general literature, while Blair Atholl reported ‘a plentiful supply of papers, magazines and books’, and Wick stocked magazines and papers (Holmes 2000–1: 81). Central to the general concerns of those supervising these spaces was their use as places for reforming moral and spiritual standards among labourers, and for providing literature aimed at self-improvement and moral guidance. The scheme died out due to lack of funding from its main providers and the subsequent dissolution of the Scottish Navvy Mission Society, coupled with the cessation of major public work projects in such remote areas and the development of more public library provision throughout Scotland.

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Figure 5.5 Ralph Glasser, 1986.

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Ralph Glasser (1916–2002) Jonathan Rose has written with great e≠ect on the auto-didactic reading traditions of the British working classes in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (2001). Though not mentioned in his work, the remarkable tale of the Ralph Glasser, Glasgow Gorbals boy born in 1916, who made it to Oxford University during the 1930s and on to a life of letters, is an important Scottish example of self-identity developed through active auto-didactic reading and education. Glasser’s reading experiences are detailed in his autobiographical memoirs Growing Up in the Gorbals (1986), Gorbals Boy at Oxford (1988) and Gorbals Voices, Siren Songs (1990). Without doubt, Glasser fits the profile of the working-class autodidact outlined by Jonathan Rose, since he overcame multiple obstacles in order to pursue an intellectual life. The first volume is an account of a slum childhood that shocked many readers; in particular, members of the Glasgow Jewish community of which Glasser had been a part. From the vantage point of considerable upward economic and social mobility, many Glaswegian Jews felt that it misrepresented the experience of the close-knit immigrant community and exaggerated the poverty and squalor of the Gorbals generally. However, as an émigré from Glasgow, Glasser recalled the Gorbals influenced by his own experience of a childhood scarred by loss and emotional impoverishment in addition to actual deprivation. His account is thereby an individual perspective, made in later life, about what a collective, working-class, Jewish past amounted to for someone who fled the Gorbals in mind and body, but as his memoirs show, never quite in spirit. Rose has described the high levels of literacy and encouragement given to Jewish children within immigrant families in London’s East End (2001: 227–8). Glasser’s particular family experience in Glasgow did depart somewhat from this paradigm. His mother died when he was 6 and his father was an embittered, compulsive gambler. Nonetheless, Glasser Senior was from a scholarly family and, as is recounted, spoke Yiddish but learned to read English, and was well read in nineteenth-century classics of both politics and fiction (1986: 33). Reading was therefore a formative part of Glasser’s childhood, yet by his own account, he received little parental support. Indeed, reading became a balm for dissatisfaction with his home life in addition to satisfying his propensity for enquiry. He recounts that his father once asked him: ‘Why do you waste your time with all this reading? It won’t get you anywhere!’(1986: 33). But books and reading provided security for the young Glasser that was lacking in his family life and reference to these in the memoirs demonstrate that escape from the Gorbals was perhaps not as unlikely as it first appears. Included in the narrative of Growing Up in the Gorbals is the general ferment of awareness that existed amongst Gorbals

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Jewry about the power of the written word. This account makes clear, for example, that Yiddish newspapers sustained a key element in the local culture; these and letters from home in the old language would be ‘chewed over’ in the various meeting places that immigrants established in their new home (1986: 17). Such early engagement with literature within the wider culture of this community further drove Glasser to seek out a place to read. Glasser’s experience of reading was cultivated within the support network of mutual aid societies. The Worker’s Circle premises in the Gorbals, for example, provided Glasser with an important space for reading. This essentially political organisation also provided welfare and education for its Jewish membership (Fleming: 353–5). Socialist politics were part of the lifeblood of the inter-war Gorbals and Glasser recalls access to the ‘revered’ texts of Mill, Marx, Engels and Kropotkin, in the circle study room as well as the ‘[h]eaps of socialist and anarchist papers and pamphlets, dog-eared and tea-stained’ that sustained dreams of a better future for their readers (1986: 6–7). Yet, despite his insight into the consolation that this place provided, political agitation was not the route chosen by Glasser and he maintained an intellectual scepticism about socialism cultivated through his quest to learn, think and distil a less ideological knowledge of the world. Like his contemporaries, he ‘hoped for hope’ but sought this through engagement with a wider array of literature and learning (1986: 49). Despite, or possibly because of parental hostility, the studious Glasser took frequent refuge in the free reading rooms of Glasgow’s Mitchell Library where sta≠ called him ‘the young professor’. Nurtured in this city’s famous public library, Glasser was tantalised by glimpses of other lives of the mind; here, at 13, he encountered Einstein’s entry from Who’s Who, which was inspiring enough for him to transcribe and paste into his exercise book (1986: 29). Glasser claimed the library drew him ‘like a magnet’ (1986: 118). Moreover, he greatly envied the freedom of students who could saunter in and out of the Mitchell at will, while he could only a≠ord time after his own day at work in a tailoring sweatshop. As a replacement for the formal education that he had to forgo at 14, Glasser took extension classes at Glasgow University. His success there paved the way for his scholarship to Oxford, which he earned through winning an essay competition. Literally ‘getting on his bike’ to travel down to Oxford, Glasser sent ahead the only books he owned: ‘Chamber’s Dictionary, Hegel’s Logic and Fisher’s History of Europe’ (1988: 3). This was a journey made with the express intention of shedding his Gorbals identity and his Jewish identity, an act of disavowal which ultimately proved unsuccessful. Initially, Glasser had di∞culty recognising that ‘work and play had changed places’ (1988: 16). In one Oxford discussion group, he created a stir by dismissing Orwell’s Road to Wigan Pier as naïve,

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a judgment that merited the reply from G. D. H. Cole that Glasser spoke a di≠erent language from his Oxford contemporaries (1988: 41–4). Yet, he also made huge e≠orts to adopt ‘the Oxford persona’ as he saw it (1988: 17). The metamorphosis was never complete, though, and he appears to have trodden an uneasy path between the role of the working-class autodidact and the identity o≠ered him as an Oxford graduate. Following a long career as an economist, psychologist and writer, Glasser admitted that his journey from the Gorbals was unending. Regardless of how far he travelled in scholarship, it is likely he saw himself always in the role of ‘untutored savage from another world’ until his death in 2002 (1988: 45). Linda Fleming

An important factor in reading activity over the course of the twentieth century has been the move of book retention from public to private spaces. Though personal libraries have always featured in the lives of readers, the means to and costs of acquiring books changed in the twentieth century, beginning with the demise in 1894 of the expensive ‘three-decker’ or three-volume publishing format favoured until then for the initial publication of fiction. Less expensive one-volume works, and the rise of paperback publishing following the successful launch of the Penguin paperback format from 1935 onwards, triggered consumer interest and a continued engagement with print. Major national surveys conducted throughout the twentieth century consistently trumpeted the continuing importance of reading in British and Scottish private lives, in comparison to other nations. A Gallup poll conducted in 1950, for example, noted a significant percentage of the population polled engaged in reading experiences. The poll, conducted in North America, Britain and Europe, asked: ‘Do you happen to be reading any books or novels at the present time?’ with the following percentage responding positively: Table 5.4 Gallup Poll, International Comparisons of Reading, 1950. Country

Percentage responding yes

Britain Norway Canada Australia Sweden USA

55 43 40 35 33 30

Source: Mann 1969: 14.

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Matters had not changed by 1963, when a European Common Market survey of the percentage of the adult population involved in reading books (not work books) at least three times a week o≠ered the following conclusions: Table 5.5 Book Reading in Europe, 1963. Country surveyed

Percentage of population reading at least three times a week

Britain Holland France Luxembourg Germany Italy Belgium

45 45 42 41 34 21 20

Source: Mann 1969: 15.

Children’s reading in 1989 A concern over the apparent decline of reading in 1987 led the then Literature Committee of the Scottish Arts Council (SAC) to commission a study of children’s reading habits and practices in Scotland. The subsequent report, published in March 1989, provided both a snapshot of the contemporary role of reading in children’s lives and a basis upon which policies could be developed in order to encourage reading. The motivation for this work was both pragmatic and aspirational: a reverse in the decline of the number of readers would result in increased revenues and independence for writers and publishers and a reduced need for subvention from the SAC; and the committee took the view that reading was ‘an enriching experience, a key to the opening of many intellectual and emotional doors, something that enhances individuality, and something that can give enormous pleasure and satisfaction’ (Lit. Comm.: 1). Its focus was not illiteracy but ‘aliteracy’, not an inability to read but an unwillingness to read. It limited the field to reading ‘literature’ in a broad sense rather than reading for education, instruction or information in a narrow one: Stephen King counted, Haynes car manuals did not. A total of 2,484 S4 (aged 14 or 15) pupils were surveyed across twenty-two secondary schools selected to give a representative sample both in terms of geography and in terms of the social mix of the school roll. This sample included two independent and four denominational schools. The survey consisted of a questionnaire administered in class by S4 English teachers;

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Figure 5.6 Contemporary reader of Iain Banks.

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the questionnaire gave pupils the opportunity to o≠er qualitative comments on aspects of their reading experience. The results confirmed evidence from other studies that the reading habit declines in adolescents, particularly boys. (This may have been partly due to peer-group pressure reflecting a perception of reading as an activity for girls or ‘geeks’.) The negative comments ranged from ‘I really don’t like reading. I would rather play football or play the computer’ to ‘I can’t get my teeth into really thick books.’ The positive comments ranged from ‘I always like to read a book as a diversion from school and television’ to ‘I usually leave an hour after the last book before I start another.’ The former comments were male, the latter female. The quantitative results gave much food for thought. Forty-nine per cent of the pupils surveyed read books for more than one hour a week while only twenty-one per cent read books for more than three hours a week. These figures must be set in the context of the average child under 15 in 1989 watching nineteen hours a week of television. Seventeen per cent read books for less than one hour per week while 28 per cent never read books at all. In other words, 45 per cent of young Scots in 1989 had no book reading habit. The most popular place for reading books was in bed while whether it was term-time or school holidays made little or no di≠erence to patterns of reading. As far as choosing what to read was concerned, the greatest influence was the recommendation of friends. Most of the respondents expressed di∞culties in finding books they liked and almost half stated a disdain for the books they had to read in English classes. The more enthusiastic readers preferred adult to children’s books. The corollary to this was a dismissal of children’s books, including those specifically targeted at teenagers. This criticism could take quite a sophisticated form: ‘Children’s books don’t seem to make you feel anything; they are aimed at keeping attention, usually due to tension; adult books make you feel things, emotion, pity, etc.’ (Lit. Comm.: 16). In particular, children’s books came in a poor second to television in terms of the range and complexity of drama available. The top ten authors in 1989 were: 21. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 10.

Stephen King Virginia Andrews James Herbert Sweet Dreams/ Sweet Valley High (multi-author series) Judy Blume S. E. Hinton J. R. R. Tolkien Je≠rey Archer Sue Townsend Joan Lingard (the only Scottish author)

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Figure 5.7 Nelson Juniors.

All respondents regarded books as generally expensive. Children in remote areas had di∞culties even in obtaining them. The report noted that most independent bookshops were struggling to survive and hoped that the new chains might take account of the specific market represented by its sample. Public libraries o≠ered little succour: rising book prices, restricted

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budgets, and declining expenditure on books made existing stock unattractive. Some libraries had extended their range of materials to include comics and magazines that might appeal to their younger readers. The report raised the issue for libraries of whether they should primarily respond to a presumed demand for these materials or whether they had a duty to provide ‘better’ reading material and encourage more use of it. School libraries did little better. The 1989 report identified three factors within secondary schools that had contributed to the decline in reading: school libraries o≠ered poor provision of books for personal as opposed to class reading; in turn, this was a result of low school budgets that had little leeway for ‘nonessential’ items such as personal reading; and the curriculum had become so regimented that teachers had little or no flexibility to encourage personal reading among their pupils. The major consequence of the report was that reading for this age group went to the top of the agenda for educational and cultural policy-makers, writers and publishers. The Higher-grade English examination was opened out to give credit to pupils’ personal reading. More resources were put into initiatives targeting children. The Scottish Book Trust under Mary Baxter and then Lindsey Fraser took the lead in many of these. In 1995 Jenny Brown, then literature director of the SAC, launched the Readiscovery project under the aegis of the Scottish Book Trust. The Readiscovery Book Bus travelled throughout Scotland between 1995 and 1999, introducing books and their authors, such as Theresa Breslin, Debi Gliori, Alison Prince and Alan Temperley, to schoolchildren, schools and communities in even the remotest of places. By then the ‘Harry Potter’ phenomenon – the first book appeared in 1997 – was under way and there was hope that the number of children with a reading habit was actually on the increase. Writers and publishers were no longer underestimating children’s ability to deal with sophisticated themes, emotions and ideas. The children surveyed in 1989 are now at time of writing (2006) 33 years old. If their attitudes to reading persisted throughout their early adult life, then for most of them reading plays little part in their leisure activities. For their own children it may be a di≠erent matter. Alistair McCleery

By end of the twentieth century, retail bookshops had eclipsed libraries as the main points of contact for readers, in particular following the development and use of North American style reading orientated bookshop spaces from the late 1980s onwards. National and international bookselling chains such as Borders and Waterstone’s initiated new or expanded shop-sites to incorporate seating, dedicated

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reading spaces and food catering, thus encouraging browsers to pause and read in situ. The function of such bookshops as alternative libraries was deliberate, meant to capitalise on the notion of reading taking place in social spaces. Yet the number of retailers in business remained static and even began to drop by the end of the century, due to the impact of online retail sellers such as Amazon, who by the end of the 1990s could count on an estimated potential market of over 15 million people in Britain with access to online services, 58 per cent percent of whom, surveys estimated, were educated to secondary school level or above (Stevenson 2004: 132). Other sources such as mail order book clubs also poached custom from traditional book sale outlets. Book clubs in Britain began attracting wide membership after 1968, when they were allowed to sell new titles on date of publication, a tactic previously reserved for traditional bookshops and booksellers. By 1978, membership in books clubs had risen to around 1 million, and by the 1990s had more than doubled to 2.5 million, accounting for between 5 and 10 per cent of all book sales in Britain (Stevenson 2004: 132). Among Scotsbased organisations to feel the e≠ects of such competition were the long standing Scottish booksellers John Smith & Son of Glasgow and James Thin of Edinburgh, who closed their town-centre shops in 2001 and 2002, leaving more generalised book chains to o≠er less individualistic services to Scottish readers.

Harry Potter It is said that in 1840 interest generated by the wanderings of Little Nell during the serial publication of Charles Dickens’ Old Curiosity Shop was such that ‘crewmen and passengers on sailing packets were met at the New York Docks by urgent queries about her fate’ (Patten: 110). In July 2007, fans awaiting the final instalment of the J. K. Rowling’s series converged on local bookshops driven by a similar interest in knowing the fate of Harry Potter and his friends. Although each book has been issued as a ‘stand alone’ novel, their contents constitute episodes in a single narrative, and later instalments make little sense without knowledge of earlier episodes. The desperation of fans to obtain the next instalment has led to changes in patterns of book publishing: simultaneous publication in the UK and the US by di≠erent publishers became necessary to avoid US sales being lost through online sales of UK copies to overseas customers. Despite the record breaking sales, there are concerns about the way the books are sold: Nielsen BookScan reported that ‘booksellers have lost £14 million in revenue on the Harry Potter books alone since 1998 because of the depth of the discounting’ (Key Note 2003: 46).

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Figure 5.8 J. K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter children’s book series.

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Rowling herself describes one scene which includes Lord Voldemort as one of the most disturbing ‘in the whole book. (The whole book; I call it one big book. In the whole series)’ (LC). Harry’s seven years at school were mapped at least in outline before the first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (PS), was accepted for publication by Bloomsbury. It was published without any special promotion in June 1997, but was soon in the news. In the week of publication, an article in the Glasgow Herald which included Rowling’s first press interview, also reported her award of £8,000 from the Scottish Arts Council, to support her as she completed the sequel, Harry Potter and Chamber of Secrets (CS) (Herald, 24 June 1997: 15). Bloomsbury retained the English rights for the rest of the world, except the United States, but less than a month later the US publishing rights to the first novel were purchased by Scholastic for a ‘six-figure sum’ (Bookseller, 4777, 16). PS was at that time ‘no. 3,495 in the BookTrack top 5,000, down from 1,777 in the previous week’ (Bookseller, 4777, 16). Before the end of that year PS had won the Nestlé Smarties prize and sold 30,000 copies (Bookseller, 4798, 38). Rowling’s success in winning the Nestlé Smarties prize, voted on by children, for PS and subsequent titles is a pointer to the fundamental reason for the series’ success: popularity with children. PS had been selling well up to the point of winning the 1997 Smarties prize but, after the publicity surrounding this award, sales according to Rosamund de la Hey of Bloomsbury, ‘went vertical’ (Horn 1999: 7). Rowling’s agent, Christopher Little, also wrote that Harry Potter’s popularity ‘grew as a result of children talking about it’ (Horn: 6). Two surveys on young people’s reading in the UK, conducted in 1995 and 2000, illustrate the phenomenon. The favourite writers for both the 7–11 and 11–16 age groups in 1995 were Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton, and the reading choices of the 4–7 age group were dominated by cartoon tie-in books. In 2000, however, for all age groups Harry Potter characters and books dominated the lists of favourite books and characters, with Roald Dahl and Jacqueline Wilson being the only other authors with significant mentions. ‘Harry Potter the brand’ seems to have emerged during the production of the first film in 1999–2000, although two novels were also published during this time. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (PoA) published in 1999, became the ‘fastest selling novel of modern times’ (Bookseller, 16 July 1999: 20). Nigel Newton, chief executive of Bloomsbury, judged that this book ‘caused the whole series to explode’ (Financial Times, 9 Oct. 1999: 4). In May 1999 Caroline Horn commented that children’s booksellers ‘probably feel that it is about time the rest of the world caught on to the phenomenon.’ (Bookseller, 28 May 1999: 37). By the end of 2000, the ‘global hysteria’ surrounding the launch of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (GoF) had ‘more in common with Beatlemania than bookselling’ (Bookseller, 4955, 12). The

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article also reports that during 2000 more than 3 million Harry Potter books had been sold and all four titles (PS, CS, PoA and GoF) had sold more than 1 million copies each. Rowling said of her first book signing in the United States that it was ‘the closest I will ever get to being a pop star’ (BBC). While acknowledging that on publication day for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (OoTP) in 2003, there would ‘be no escaping Pottermania’, and that Bloomsbury’s marketing strategy was ‘restrained’, The Economist concluded that the biggest risk was: ‘not of too much hype, but that the latest Potter book will lack the magical appeal of its predecessors. If Ms Rowling loses her power to enthral, not even Hollywood’s marketing wand will be able to save the day’ (Economist, 21 June 2003: 78). An examination of the Harry Potter phenomenon leads to the conclusion that much of its pervasiveness arises not from Rowling’s own work, but from the work of others writing about or using themes from her books. The publication of George Beahm’s Muggles and Magic was in fact timed ‘to capitalise on the hype surrounding the release of the third Harry Potter film’ (Amazon website, 2000). There are printed fan fictions such as The Plot Thickens . . .: Harry Potter Investigated by Fans for Fans (Wizarding World Press, 2004), websites devoted to the books and the films (such as ‘Leaky Cauldron’ and ‘Mugglenet’), books, articles, academic conferences and theses. Examples of titles include: Wizard! Harry Potter’s Brand Magic (Brown 2005) on Harry Potter as marketing; The Irresistible Rise of Harry Potter (Blake 2002) on Harry Potter as politics; translations into many languages including Albanian, Chinese, Finnish and Turkish; and articles relating to medicine – ‘Harry Potter Casts a Spell on Accident Prone Children’ (Gwilym et al. 2005) – that concluded that ‘releasing Harry Potter books seems to reduce the incidence of traumatic injuries in children’; financial a≠airs – ‘Harry Potter and the Tax-Accounting Myths’ (Nolan)’, and other subjects, such as ‘Harry Potter and the Future of the West’ (Fountain) and ‘Finding Platform 93⁄4: Connections between Technology and Literacy’ (Moulton). The 2006 Edinburgh Festival Fringe included a children’s show entitled ‘Potted Potter: The Uno∞cial Harry Experience’ (Fringe Programme 2006, 13). In the end, the foundations for the global success of Harry Potter are in the sales of the books throughout the world to both child and adult readers. There is much anecdotal evidence that the Harry Potter series encourages reading among children: Daniel Radcli≠e, who plays Harry Potter in the film versions, has said that reading the Harry Potter books convinced him that reading could be fun and encouraged him to read other books (GoF DVD 2006). As Minerva McGonagall prophesied in the first chapter of PS every child (at least in the Westernised world) does know his name (PS, 15). Helen Williams

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Figure 5.9 Gore Vidal at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, 2001.

In-depth studies have concluded that interest in reading amongst British and Scottish readers remained solid at the beginning of the twenty-first century, despite challenges for leisure time from other media. Thus a Scottish Arts Council funded study estimated that in 1994, 67 per cent of the population continued to read books, with 52 per cent identified as regular readers (reading three or more times a week), rates in line with or slightly above the average of the general British population (Darroch: 27). Further evidence of continuing Scottish interest in the printed word is demonstrated in the rise in ticket sales at o∞cial celebrations of book culture such as the Edinburgh International Book Festival, which saw attendance rise from 56,000 in 1993 to 70,000 in 2000. Other surveys suggested that while time dedicated to reading remained high, what individuals were reading now had changed. Thus in 2000 book reading in Britain accounted for an

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estimated 52 per cent of reading time, in contrast to 44 per cent in 1988. Share of time apportioned to newspapers, on the other hand, fell from 44 per cent to 32 per cent between 1988 and 2000. Time apportioned to magazines rose from 13 per cent to 22 per cent between 1988 and 1998, but in 2000 was said to have fallen back to 16 per cent. Interestingly, such surveys concluded that the proportion of time spent on reading had risen relative to other leisure activities, while time spent listening to or viewing oral and visual media had fallen (Publishing 2002: 17). Unaccounted for in such analyses was the increasing attention paid by younger generations to online web activity, which in the Twenty-first century will pose its own challenge to reading space and time.

Edinburgh International Book Festival The idea of a festival in Scotland dedicated solely to the published word did not take hold until the founding of the Edinburgh International Book Festival in August 1983. There had been British and Scottish antecedents: in 1949, the city of Cheltenham launched the first annual literary festival in Britain; in Edinburgh, small, ‘one-o≠ ’ events were held sporadically from the 1960s onward, including a significant literary event organised in Edinburgh University’s McEwan Hall by the publisher John Calder in 1962, and appearances by Gore Vidal, John Mortimer and other literary figures at the Edinburgh International Festival in 1980. The Edinburgh International Book Festival, however, was the first, long-term event in Scotland to be dedicated solely to books and their creators. Initially, though, it had been conceived as a temporary experiment, supported for one year by the National Book League and the Scottish Arts Council. The festival was geared to joining the commercial aspects found in trade book fairs around the world (selling books, exhibiting new titles, o≠ering space for trade representative to meet) together with the promotion of new and established writers through public readings and encounters with their readers. An unusual feature of the event was the choice of venue – rather than using standard exhibition halls or hotel spaces, readings and book stands were set in tents and marquees on the green spaces of Charlotte Square Gardens. Support was also forthcoming from local booksellers such as Ainslie Thin from the long established James Thin bookshop, who helped with the practical and technical aspects of running the event. Its first director, Jenny Brown, had previously worked as an assistant administrator at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the companion alternative theatrical festival that runs alongside the more prominent and established Edinburgh International Festival. The

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Figure 5.10 Poets Edwin Morgan and Liz Lochhead at first Wigtown Book Festival, 1999.

Book Festival, held to coincide with these other summer festivals, started small, organising thirty author events and exhibiting 6,000 titles during a two-week run. The experiment was a hit, attracting over 30,000 visitors and selling £60,000 worth of books. Its startling success prompted its backers to renew their support, and the festival became a bi-annual event, growing in size and prominence with each manifestation. Jenny Brown co-ordinated five book festivals during her tenure between 1983 and 1991. She was replaced by Shona Munro, who organised two events in 1993 and 1995, who in turn was succeeded in 1996 by Jan Fairley, who ran the 1997 book festival. Her experiences of studying world literature and teaching in South America were instrumental in her decision to focus that year’s events on South Africa and South America: the Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa opened the Book Festival, and sessions were held with the biographer of the Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara, and Gillian Slovo, daughter of famed members of the African National Congress (Scotsman, 14 Aug. 2004: 4). Faith Liddell directed the festival between 1997 and 1999, and in the latter year turned it into an annual event. In 2000, when

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Catherine Lockerbie took on the directorship, the festival hosted 350 authors and had 70,000 visitors (Scotland on Sunday, 27 Aug. 2000: N.P.). It has continued to utilise tented venues as a means of promoting intimacy between author and audience, a powerful and attractive option that has prompted authors to come specifically to Edinburgh to speak. Most seem to agree with Malcolm Bradbury who declared that the Edinburgh Book Festival was the best of all the international gatherings of writers (Scotland on Sunday, 27 Aug. 2000: N.P.). It has become a major fixture on the publishing circuit, utilised to showcase new works by established authors and provide high visibility and marketing opportunities for UK and Scottish publishers. It has also inspired other UK book festivals, such as the Hay-onWye Book Festival, begun in 1988, the Bath Book Festival, begun in 1993, and the Swindon Book Festival, started in 1994. Importantly for the Scottish book, it has consistently promoted new Scottish works, their authors and their publishers, thus acting as a unique cultural space for Scotland’s book culture. David Finkelstein

Section 6

THE FUTURE OF THE BOOK IN SCOTLAND Trends and Prospects from 2000 David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery n 1996 the then manager of the Scotland football team took his players to the cinema to see Braveheart (1995) in the hope that the film of Scottish victory in the fourteenth-century wars of independence would inspire them to success on the pitch. The film traced the career of William Wallace, but only from the point where he had returned from Rome, fluent in the universal language of clerical hegemony, Latin, and included his victories against the armies of Edward I, before his capture and death by being hanged, drawn and quartered in London. More apocryphal incidents in the film included the impregnation of the French wife of the crown prince by the doughty Scotsman; while the more historically accurate account of the Scottish nobles sharing a common heritage with their English counterparts, and indeed owning estates in both countries, provided a key motivation to the narrative’s depiction of upper-class pusillanimity and desertion. The film was based on a book by an American academic of Scottish ancestry; Wallace was played by an Australian born in the USA where he now lived and worked; most of the action was shot in Ireland with the collaboration of the Irish army; and Braveheart is owned, reflecting the production investment, by an American studio, Twentieth Century Fox, part of News Corp, a media conglomerate, the fiefdom of Rupert Murdoch, an Australian of Scots origins who has taken American nationality. The Scotland football team, mainly composed of Scots playing in English teams as opposed to Scottish teams comprising players from everywhere except Scotland, failed to make much progress in Euro 96 but, unusually for those in such an occupation, the manager remained in post until he resigned after failure to qualify for the 2002 World Cup. He was succeeded by a German whose contract as manager of the Kuwaiti national side was bought out by the Scottish FA.

I

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In other words, globalisation characterised many aspects of Scottish culture, in its widest sense, by the end of the twentieth century. It had marked, as this volume has shown, the book in Scotland from the end of the nineteenth century and will continue to mark it in the twentyfirst. Globalisation, in the sense of disregard for the boundaries of the nation-state, has a long pedigree, particularly if we include the single market represented by the British Empire; even globalisation, in the sense of the spread of specific cultural narratives and icons, has an extended history, particularly if we include the relationship between the mother country and its diasporic market; but perhaps globalisation, in the sense of transnational ownership of the media, is a phenomenon more clearly associated with the second half of the twentieth century. As noted in Section 4, the process of consolidation and concentration within the global publishing industry has resulted in at best changes of ownership, at worst disappearance of long-standing imprints within Scottish publishing. Indeed, Section 2 also described a similar process of merger and shrinkage within a Scottish printing industry that faced strong competition within an international marketplace. Within bookselling too, independent shops and indigenous chains have disappeared; often their actual places on the high street were taken by the outlets of bookselling chains owned in London or New York, as Section 1 described. Globalisation cannot be reversed – at least not in the foreseeable future. The structure of the global book publishing industry has now polarised and comprises a small number of global publishing/media conglomerates and a large number of small specialist niche publishers. There are approximately twenty major international publishing/media conglomerates, that, in addition to being vertically integrated, that is, in ownership of companies up and down the value chain, are also ‘crossmedia’ to facilitate the exploitation of common intellectual property rights. The concentration level of these companies varies from country to country but, generally, the ten largest publishing companies within each country, and their associated enterprises, between them control 50 per cent to 70 per cent of the turnover. In the UK, and therefore referring to companies based in London or Oxford, such concentration is at a level of 80 per cent suggesting a greater than average dominance of key players. The UK industry consists of more than 15,000 publishers, covering 48,000 imprints. Of these approximately 3,500 are publishing on a regular basis. Fewer than forty of these account for 56 per cent of all bookshop sales but no single publisher has an overall market share of more than 9 per cent. On the other hand, the three largest publishers – Bertelsmann, News Corporation and

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Pearson – control 35 per cent of the consumer market alone. At the other end of the spectrum the publishing industry comprises a large number of small independent indigenous companies, where the domestic market represents their primary focus and source of titles and revenue. The nature of the publishing product, as a creative and cultural product, is generally less susceptible to standardisation than products in other industries (there are currently in the region of 120,000 new titles being produced in the UK each year, each making a unique, it is hoped, contribution) and it is likely that these nichepublishing houses will continue to be represented. This consolidation of publishing within media groups, through takeover, merger and integration, has resulted in a concentration of the book market (in turn, exaggerated through horizontal integration such as the acquisition of Hodder Headline by W. H. Smith, a deal itself following the Smith purchase of the retailing arm of John Menzies). Such a concentration results, despite perceptions to the contrary, in a decrease in consumer choice and an increase in the commonality of transnational culture (in turn, exaggerated by the integrated marketing of a range of media products within the one group). The emphasis here is not on non-Scottish ownership in itself but on the e≠ects of that nonScottish ownership. Ultimately the concern is not with the vulnerability of Scottish publishing or non-Scottish ownership of the book trade per se but with the e≠ects of that upon the nation’s sense of itself, upon its cultural identity. The Scottish publishing industry is characterised by its fragmentation and by the maturity of its markets. There are some eighty-five publishers, sixty of which are members of the Scottish Publishers Association, and fifty have fewer than 100 titles in print. As might be expected from the analysis above, the retail markets are dominated by a few very large commercial players, based mainly outside Scotland and even the UK and there are high levels of competition, both from within Scotland and from other English-language publishers. In the case of Gaelic-language publishing, there is apparently a decreasing market (based on what seem at time of writing inexorable demographic statistics, inexorable that is without exceptional state intervention). Retail markets are consolidating across the UK, leading to increased power in the hands of central buyers based at headquarters in London or Swindon. The relative proximity of Scotland to London, one of the world’s major publishing centres, leads to a ‘drain’ of successful authors that Canongate, for instance, have striven hard to resist. Publishers in Scotland also produce a limited set of product formats and the ‘new “new media” ’, discussed by Suzanne Ebel below, have failed to make much of an impact on their

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practices. All of the above characteristics are, to some extent, shared by other small publishers in the UK and by other industries in small countries but factors peculiar to Scotland include a limited range of types of publishers – as Section 4 stressed, there are now very few children’s book publishers and very small educational and academic publishing sectors – and the failure of libraries to support proactively indigenous publications. (In mitigation, it must be remarked that, as described in Section 1, library spending has contracted as libraries have become more userled, giving readers what they want rather than what they might need, and extending their range of services from books and periodicals to CDs and DVDs.) In general, the nature of content from many Scottish publishers is perceived as too ‘regional’ or niche to appeal outside Scotland or to have any mass appeal.

The new ‘new media’ Professor Susan Greenfield, director of the Royal Institution and Fullerian Professor of Physiology at Oxford University, once stated that we are moving from being people of the book to become people of the screen. Certainly, as the Scots and the rest of the British population become familiar and more comfortable with information communication technology (ICT) and start to use the internet for purposes other than shopping and playing games, readers and writers alike are beginning to realise the potential that this technology has for transforming narratives. In his book The Death of Literature, Alvin Kernan (1990) is concerned about the way in which ‘literature’ is being crowded out by the increasing influence of other leisure activities such as television-watching and cinemagoing. He worries that people will forget that reading a novel, for example, can take a person into another dimension, one that is more meaningful precisely because the reader has had to ‘work’ in order to create sense and meaning from the words in front of them. The book is a physical presence and reminder of new insights gained, a shift in attitude or even a sanctuary in troubled times. As Robert Darnton put it in The Kiss of Lamourette: Reflections of Cultural History (1990), ‘Men and women have read in order to save their souls, to improve their manners, to repair their machinery, to seduce their sweethearts, to learn about current events, and simply to have fun’ (166). The solidity of print is a reassuring constant in a fast-paced world that consumes and disposes in equal measure. So how can the writers working in the new media encourage old and new readers to appreciate and regard digital narratives in the same way? New media writing introduces forms that are familiar but with a twist. Michael Joyce describes new e-literature in Othermindedness: The

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Emergence of Network Culture (184) as seeming ‘self-evident, as if we have always seen it and, paradoxically, as if we have never seen it before’. New media work and web-specific work draw on the creator’s skills as a writer, artist and designer – machines and software programs cannot yet replace these skills. New media works ask readers and writers to reconsider the importance of the visual medium in a literal world, in other words, to stimulate the reader’s imagination through sound and images other than text. Postmodern literature, and new media in particular, demands that ‘the gentle readers’ place themselves in the immersive reading space, causing commentators and critics alike to ask if the intimate relationship between writer and reader has been lost entirely or has simply changed its terms. Authors have the freedom to imagine and write about whatever subject they choose; readers have the responsibility of freely o≠ering their time and their minds to make the fiction come alive. In new media narratives, the bargain is very similar except that the reader has physically to interact with the piece instead of reading passively. But what is ‘new media writing’? Many new media writers do not like the term but use it in an attempt to describe their genre to readers: new media may be one, none or all of fiction, literary fiction, novels, non-fiction, short stories or poetry. Then there are the pieces that ask the reader to volunteer to become a ‘writer’ too, by adding text or sound or image to the ‘seed’ piece, creating an organic work that continues to grow as long as it is ‘fed’. But no narrative, no matter how beautifully it is written or complemented with sound and exquisite images, can ‘live’ if it is not read. New media writing is often playful, teasing the reader with non-linear links (text hotlinks that lead to images or a sound rather than more text for example) or challenging the limits of language through deconstruction of the codex. The writing is sometimes collaborative and tests the interpretative reading skills of the reader/viewer. These writers take the knowledge that they have gained from reading and analysing print texts to drive their new writing practices. Their aim is ‘total language’, a term coined by MarieLaure Ryan in Cyberspace Textuality: Computer Technology and Literary Theory to refer to a form of literary text that is kinetic, grows in rhizomatous patterns and causes a multisensory reaction in the reader. Total language will create ‘every text in one’ through iteration of a text by the same or a number of readers, but does not require any further action from the reader. Above all, new media writing is an exploration of the capabilities of the available hardware and software and an examination of the readers’ willingness to explore new forms of literature. Further, new media literature ‘must be viewed through the medium of an electronic display . . .’ (trAce). New media work would not have been created if there had not been advances in computing technology and the

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availability of this technology among large numbers of ‘ordinary’ people. In addition, most new media writing utilises hypertextual links in order to thread or structure related lexias or other elements within the narrative. These hypertext links began as text in the twentieth century, but have evolved into other visual material like icons, animated objects or video clips in the twenty-first century. Perhaps narrative spaces are the next evolutionary stage in new media, particularly for ‘readers’ (like gamers) for whom reading is not a natural habit, as they allow role-playing interaction rather than asking the player to make choices. Gamers find that role-playing is satisfying because they do not have to explore multiple paths in order to find a conclusion: the ritual that they bring to their role-play is what satisfies them. This might explain why there has been more progress in the field of hypermediated poetry than in narrative forms. Poetry is much easier to shape, illustrate and supplement with sound. It is therefore simpler for readers to engage themselves with poetry if they are experimenting with new media narratives. Cybertexts, a form of poetry that ebbs and flows organically in an online environment, highlight the dynamic production of the text (Ryan: 9). Espen Aarseth coined the term ‘cybertexts’; it is a neologism derived from Norbert Wiener’s discipline of cybernetics. Aarseth argues that texts (both electronic and print) and computer games share ‘semiotic variables’ and the concepts of ‘perspective, access, determinability, transience, dynamics, and user function. Combinations of these variables yield 576 di≠erent variations, which can be plotted on a grid to locate a particular text’s strategies within the cybertext domain’ (Hayles: 28). Aarseth wants to impart the idea that ‘the link’ is passé and that electronic literature is moving on. He argues that writers and readers have to gain ‘computational perspective’ so that literary work, games and intertextual pieces are regarded as equal. Hayles (40) says that Aarseth ‘reinterpreted the print book in terms of the computer, rather than shoe-horning electronic texts into categories derived from print’. These cybertexts emerge and evolve on screen according to the coding of the program that was used to create them. The readers’ interactions (by means of the mouse or other selection devices) feed themselves into the coding process and change the content irreversibly. In idle moments, the screen will reload with fresh text to attract new viewer/readers and enable the process to start again. Text as performance is a mode of captivating interest, and readers are kept because the texts are read once before they erase themselves. Performance was an important aspect of Victorian reading – dinnerparty groups like the Janeites acted out favourite scenes from Jane Austen novels – a little like the crew of the SS Enterprise who utilised the fictional holodeck in Star Trek. Performance is as important today in the digital narrative as it was in the past. Hypermediated works such as Potter X

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Kling’s ‘1⫻1⫽3 writing, drawing, building (X/⫽) in the mo(ve)ment is the form’ are more performance than poetry when projected onto a large screen (instead of a more ‘traditional’ computer-screen viewing) because of the way in which they ‘build’ image and sound in the creation of their pieces. (The pseudonym conceals Pat Potter and Christoph Kling, two architects from Iowa who began an artist/architect working partnership in 1997. They have shown their pieces at conferences and competitions in Paris, Taipei and Romania.) Similarly, the web and PC screen-specific pieces of poets like Christy She∞eld Sanford, Reiner Strasser and Miekal And are multilayered combinations of sound, graphics and images that require rereading on a regular basis to obtain a sense of the real meaning behind the work. (She∞eld Sanford was a trAce writer-in-residence, and during her virtual residency she introduced trAcers to the work of both Strasser, with whom she collaborates on a regular basis, and And.) One of the most interesting pieces of screen-specific work to be published online is Kate Pullinger, Stefan Schemat and babel’s The Breathing Wall. This is the story of Michael who has been imprisoned for the alleged murder of his girlfriend, Lana, who speaks to him through dreams. Schemat’s Hyper Trance Fiction software has been used by babel and Pullinger to present a series of day- and night-dreams to the reader/viewer. The unique aspect of this work is that the night-dream sequences are controlled by the breathing of the reader/viewer. A headset with a microphone is used with the microphone being positioned under the nose to capture the rate of breath. The more relaxed they are, the more layers will be accessed. These night-dreams are designed to be hypnotic and to encourage relaxation through the use of video sequences and sound loops. Despite the e≠orts of various organisations to raise the profile of new media writers and the practice of new media reading, it is often relegated to an afterthought paragraph in trade journals or limited coverage in specialist online publications. Although many new media writers are acclaimed as innovative, exciting and highly skilled in their practice, they are unable to earn a living from their work. The majority of new media authors have full-time jobs or undertake a range of commissions in order to make a decent income. For example, Marjorie Luesebrink (M. D. Coverley) earns a living as a writing teacher and hypertext author, and elaborates on writer expectation, saying: Only a very, very small percentage of writers have ever made a living from writing. Instead, they often take their talents to the marketplace. Writers on the web can make money doing a host of net-related jobs – editing, writing copy, consulting on web page presentation or game design, and so forth. (Thomas)

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However, becoming a new media writer is a catch-22 situation. New media writers have to learn the necessary skills in order to create the work. This requires a certain amount of financial input from the writer without a guaranteed return, because the writers have to attract an audience to their work in order to create reader loyalty. In America and Australia, there seems to be more recognition of new media writing as an acceptable genre for study and research, as even a cursory look at university curricula shows. The internet and the web are organic technologies: they grow as technology advances. It is therefore not unreasonable to suggest that writing practices must evolve too. New media writers are stopping to draw breath and survey the cyberlandscape, and readers and producers/publishers of new media need to do the same. Steve Jones sums up the agenda facing readers, authors and publishers in the twenty-first century: In regard to the Internet, it is not only important to understand audiences – people – and what they do with media, it is important to understand what audiences think they do, what creators and producers think audiences do and what they think audiences will do, what venture capitalists think about audiences and producers, what software and hardware makers think and do, and so on. (Jones: 9) In many ways, Jones is reiterating what Manuel Castells suggests is occurring when space and time intertwine with society and are transformed due to the e≠ects of technology and the societal changes it historically induces. But the Catch-22 is that readers, authors and publishers have di≠erent contracts with each other; and, if the contract is broken at any point, the circular flow is interrupted. Reading is a ubiquitous act, and it has become so familiar to us that we have a number of print strategies in order to cope with any genre. But new media writing asks readers to relearn the reading act either by applying some of our knowledge to situations or by believing in our intuitive response to a choice of paths. New media writing will enable readers to escape the ‘tyranny of the author’ because they will be in charge of the reading act, and the writers are not able to dictate how their work should be read. New media writing is an important new cultural form as technology’s role is to enhance writing practice, not replace it. New media narrative also has the power to influence readers and to create a valid new form of literature. Social change is an inevitable part of twenty-first-century life, and the e≠ects of the paradigm shift on literature are only a small part of this. Interactive narratives are surely a step towards ‘something’, just as cave paintings were overtaken by the oral tradition that in turn became a written one. Readers have learned to decipher the narratives depicted in prehistoric artwork and cartouches, learnt to read without moving their lips

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and tackled the mysteries of hypertext or web-specific works while not being entirely certain of the ‘rules’. Aarseth (2000) theorises that ‘when we follow links and make connections in computer games, it’s play. But when we do the same thing in literature, it’s ergodic – or work.’ ‘Ergodic’ was a term derived from ergon, work and hodos, path – literature where a reader must use ‘nontrivial e≠ort’ in order to read a text (Aarseth 1997: 1). Publishers and readers need to find a balance between work and play that will encourage both parties to embrace new media narratives and place them as credible choices on the readers’ hierarchy of purchasing choices. Suzanne Ebel

Figure 6.1 Screen shot, BooksfromScotland website.

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Two studies undertaken in 1992 and 2002 o≠er some preliminary notions of the direction in which the Scottish publishing industry, as characterised above, may be going. In 1992 the proportion of Scottishbased subsidiaries of larger non-Scottish-based parent companies was 12 per cent. The other figures were 28 per cent plcs, 26 per cent institutional or charity-linked houses, 16 per cent sole traders, 14 per cent partnerships, and 4 per cent subsidiaries of other Scottish-based parent companies. Of the last category, for example, one belonged to a Scottish bookseller and another to a Scottish book wholesaler. This was all that remained of a previously much stronger pattern of vertical integration, particularly of printer/publisher. By 2002 this had altogether disappeared. HarperCollins in 1992 had their own print production facilities in Bishopbriggs, part of greater Glasgow, but ten years later this was little more than a warehouse. The printing works had been sold o≠ and administrative and editorial functions were based in London or New York – only the brass plate remained in Glasgow. A more equivocal symptom of the health of Scottish publishing is that by 2002 the proportion (and number) of Scottish-based subsidiaries of larger non-Scottish-based parent companies had fallen to less than 5 per cent (three of which survived from 1992: HarperCollins, as noted above, part of News Corporation; Chambers Harrap, in 2002 an imprint of the Vivendi group of companies; and Elsevier Science, the latest incarnation of the imprint that had been Churchill Livingstone in 1992, later Pearson Professional, and later still Harcourt Health). The previously independent house of Geddes & Grosset had been subsumed within the larger publishing group of D. C. Thomson based in Dundee. That expansion by D. C. Thomson cannot really be seen as a tentative index of the maturing of company structures within Scotland since 1992. On the one hand, the number of sole traders has remained static at 16 per cent; on the other, the proportion of institutional or charitylinked houses has risen to 43 per cent and the number of plcs fallen to 20 per cent. If the 43 per cent of institutional publishers, such as Scottish Natural Heritage or the National Galleries, is set aside together with the smaller proportion of subsidiaries, then of the balance, medium-sized enterprises had greatly declined in number over the decade between 1992 and 2002. What was left was a small number of medium-sized (but large in Scottish terms) independent publishers, such as Canongate, and a relatively large number of small and very small companies. The latter contained a significant proportion of single-book publishers, self-publishers, and occasional or lifestyle publishers. It is unlikely that much growth will come from these and the decline of the medium-sized must be a cause of concern.

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In 1992 in terms of three key indicators – turnover, number of titles in print and number of full-time employees – all of Scotland’s largest companies were subsidiaries. The more geographically peripheral companies were the smallest and tended to be sole traders or partnerships. The 1992 profile of the publishing industry represented in microcosm ‘the Scottish weakness’: physical marginality and economic peripherality. In 2002 Scottish independent companies continued to fail to challenge the subsidiaries on all three indicators. The total turnover generated in 1992 by publishing within Scotland was £142.7m but £121m of this was accounted for by HarperCollins. (The then Chambers and Churchill Livingstone together accounted for a further £3.6m.) In 2001–2 the sales turnover (comprising book sales and sales of rights) of the Scottish book industry was valued at £188.5m (at publishers’ invoice terms). When HarperCollins is excluded from this total the figure is reduced to £30.3m. Sales turnover for the rest of the industry excluding HarperCollins was £21.7m in 1992. This equates to £42.9m at 2002 levels so the actual figure of £30.3m in 2001–2 must be regarded as indicative of a decline in real terms. This fall can partly be explained by the fact that, although book prices have generally kept pace with the Retail Price Index (RPI), publishers have been paying higher discounts to booksellers and invoice revenue may not have been increasing with the RPI. However, this remains at best a partial explanation and the decline in turnover must also be read as evidence of continuing fragility. The total of £30.3m also conceals a great disparity in turnover between the larger publishers and the smaller. In 1992 only 32 per cent of firms, including all the subsidiaries, recorded export turnover, a total of £43.7m and a range from £800 to £25m, the latter being HarperCollins. In 2002 it was apparent that the domestic Scottish market was still the most significant focus for Scottish publishers. Of publishers in the study 77 per cent indicated that more than half their turnover came from sales in Scotland and 53 per cent acknowledged that more than 75 per cent of their sales were in the domestic market. There is again a corollary between size and market perspective: the larger the company, the more likely it is to look outwards beyond Scotland for its markets. Canongate, one of the larger Scottish independents, scored a notable success with its publication of Canadian author Yann Martell’s Life of Pi that went on to win the Man Booker Prize for fiction; Mainstream, in 2005 partly losing its independence to join the Random House Group, publishes a significant list of sports biographies for a wide market; and Polygon, once independent (and wholly owned by Edinburgh University) but as of 2002 subsumed within Birlinn, took the initial risk in publishing a series of

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fictions about the life of a lady private detective in Botswana that have now rightly achieved international recognition. These three examples illustrate that the type of title published in Scotland is diverse and no one category of content predominates – despite the stereotyping alluded to above. The number of titles published has increased year on year. (In the 2002 survey, publishers were asked how many titles they intended to publish in the coming year, giving 2,535 as the approximate total figure for the industry including HarperCollins, 1,051 excluding the latter.) This is indicative of a persistent structural flaw within the Scottish publishing industry: that its focus is on the creation of product and its entry into the supply chain with insu∞cient account being taken of its marketing and sale. The large number of small publishers is chiefly responsible for the perpetuation of this imbalance of focus – too much on the book and too little on the reader. In 2002 68 per cent of publishers surveyed had fewer than 100 titles in print, 27 per cent had between 100 and 450 in print, and 5 per cent claimed between 800 and 10,000 – the last category undoubtedly included HarperCollins and Elsevier. What the survey did not reveal is what level of turnover came from which number of titles. In publishing, 80 per cent of turnover can come from 20 per cent of titles and the number of titles in print as above gives little indication of sales potential. Similarly, it is di∞cult to deduce from the figures which types of books are likely to be the most profitable, but anecdotal evidence suggests that non-fiction represents less risk. This is a situation that will not change despite large advances being given to celebrities whose ‘autobiographies’ then fail to match commercial expectations. Fiction (including children’s fiction) in a UK context generally makes up about 50 per cent of publishers’ output; in Scotland the figure is much smaller at 40 per cent with popular non-fiction and academic/ cultural dominating. Whilst fiction and poetry have higher profiles in the media, non-fiction is more suited to niche or small publishing as markets are easier to identify and target. The more successful companies, that is, the subsidiaries, tend also to be the oldest – founded before 1960. Most independent publishers were established between 1961 and 1980. There is, as one might expect, a greater failure rate for companies founded in the past twenty years. However, the general picture is one of stability. The number of active publishers in Scotland, defined through membership of the SPA, has remained fairly static over the past twenty years. A comparison of membership then and now indicates relatively little change in terms of failure and start-up (with some notable start-up exceptions, for example, in Barrington Stoke and Birlinn). This tenacity can be accounted for

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through the value that exists in IPR rather than tangible goods underpinning the continuity of companies as owners or long-term licensees of that IPR; and through the willingness of new creative individuals to enter publishing through the vehicle of an existing company – as was the case of Jamie Byng at Canongate. Many of the companies in the 1992 survey were coy when it came to revealing sources of finance; only 68 per cent gave information in this area. Of that sample, those companies that were subsidiaries depended on investment from their parent companies for both working capital and investment for development; four of the independents were financed through bank loans; one had obtained venture capital from 3i and one was underwritten by the Scottish Arts Council; the remainder were financed through the capital investment of the sole trader or partners. The independents relied on profits from sales as a source of further capital for development. Yet only 20 per cent of all respondents expressed a preference for a form of further investment funding: six preferred a loan, two a loan guarantee, and two an equity stake. By 2002 the issue of capitalisation had moved much higher up the agenda. Respondents indicated that they required access to a wider range of competitive types of funding in order to reduce the reliance on personal funds or bank overdraft facilities. Without such access, growth is inhibited and the sector stagnates. There is little indication that this situation will improve beyond 2006, particularly with the Scottish Executive’s rejection of the plans of the Cultural Commission in favour of a Creative Scotland exercising essentially the same kind of limited role as the SAC has followed up to this point – 2006. Publishers were asked in 2002 about their growth rates over the previous five years. From the survey it was apparent that some publishers have been experiencing good levels of growth while others reported less positive results. (Of publishers surveyed, 57 per cent did not supply data on growth and this is likely to have an impact upon any analysis. The reason given was lack of time to do even basic financial analysis on their companies!) Of the twenty-four who replied, eight reported growth of between 1 per cent and 40 per cent; ten reported growth of between 41 per cent and 100 per cent and six reported over 100 per cent growth. Of those companies, ten were independents, four were institutions/public organisations, two were trusts, five were private shareholder-owned and three were plcs. Data are virtually impossible to find on the profit margins of any of these publishers. Turnover figures and growth figures are useful but they do not indicate what level of profit is being made and profits are what companies use to turn into investment in other areas to grow and diversify into the future.

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Publishing in Scotland was and is concentrated in Edinburgh. This is unlikely to change without either adoption of ‘new “new media” ’ or state intervention as has happened with other creative industries. There was a small increase in between 1992 and 2002 in the number of companies based in Glasgow. That city has been at the heart of government-supported e≠orts to create a ‘critical mass’ of screen-based media industries and this, if successful, might produce a spin-o≠ as far as publishing is concerned. If decentralisation of governmental bodies such as Scottish National Heritage continues as Scottish Executive policy, then presumably the publishing functions of these bodies will also be dispersed – in the case of SNH to Inverness. Small publishers are more geographically scattered than the large: for example, Aberdeen and Argyll each contained two firms in 2002 and there was one in each of Caithness, Duns, Forres, Galashiels, Grantown-uponSpey, Inverness, Lerwick, Nairn, New Lanark, Stirling, Stornoway and Whithorn. To summarise, the gradient of typical companies involved in publishing in Scotland ranges from, at the one end in terms of turnover and titles, a large Edinburgh-based company of long ancestry but now wholly-owned by a conglomerate outside Scotland to, at the other end, a ‘provincial’ company of recent foundation operating as a sole trader or partnership. The third indicator noted above was employment. In general, employment can be a misleading criterion of size, and unrelated to turnover or amount of product, in an industry such as publishing that has a strong tradition of employing freelancers. Yet this is not the case within Scotland. In 1992 over half of those surveyed employed fewer than five people on a full-time basis. All employed freelancers with a fairly even spread over editors, designers, proofreaders, and artists. In 1992 the total of full-time employees was 1,586, of part-time employees eighty-three, and of full-time vacancies to be filled within the year sixty-one. The largest firms in terms of turnover and titles were also the largest employers: HarperCollins employed 1,123 full-time sta≠, while Chambers and Churchill Livingstone then employed 120 and 150 respectively. These firms also o≠ered the greatest employment opportunities in terms of recruitment although they used disproportionately fewer freelancers than the smaller firms. In 2002 there were approximately 1,258 people employed in publishing companies in Scotland on a variety of di≠erent employment bases. This figure excluded freelancers, self-employed sales representatives, or those working for book-related organisations such as trade bodies and charities. According to figures produced by the Society for Freelance Editors and Proofreaders (SFEP), there were around thirty-one freelance editors and proofreaders operating in Scotland, the

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majority regularly employed by both Scottish and UK companies. It is important to note that the SFEP figures are not comprehensive as they excluded freelance workers involved in supporting the production, marketing, sales and distribution functions and others who did not belong to societies and trade bodies. However, the comparison over time would seem to indicate a decline in the numbers employed within the industry in Scotland. This can be accounted for by the contraction of HarperCollins (the sell-o≠ of its production facilities noted above) and of Chambers Harrap. If these two are discounted, then there may actually have been a marked increase in the numbers employed in publishing between 1992 and 2002. The subsidiaries have been more committed to the continuing professional development of their sta≠ than the smaller companies and, indeed, have acted as a source of recruitment of qualified personnel. Graduates from the specialist courses at Napier and Stirling Universities would typically be taken on by one of the subsidiaries and, after a period of employment there that included further in-house training, would move into the independent sector – either as an employee in an established company or as a partner or sole entrepreneur in a start-up. In 1992, 20 per cent of the companies surveyed employed their own sales force; 22 per cent used freelance salespeople; 18 per cent employed both. Some of the institutional publishers relied exclusively on sales through their own outlets and/or by direct mail to members. By 2002 the challenges posed by the supply chain and the retail environment seemed of a wholly di≠erent order from those of the simple employment of reps. Most of the publishers in Scotland had by then engaged the services of a distributor. The service involved (and involves) storage of the books, invoicing, picking, packing and dispatching and delivery of the books in accordance with orders received, credit control and debt collection and reporting the trading performances to client publishers. For these services, the distributor generally charges in the region of 10 per cent to 15 per cent of the invoiced value of the book. The rationale behind using a third party to distribute is that it enables companies to focus on their core business, which is publishing books. Some publishers nevertheless undertake to provide this service themselves as they consider it important to deal directly with booksellers and other customers and/or their output is considered too small to outsource. Most distributors demand a certain level of turnover, which many small publishers do not meet. For the latter, the use of publicly provided or supported distribution services, such as Book Source and Bookspeed, is much more marked. In a sense, this

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represents a transfer of the problems of improving access to markets and increasing volume of business from the small publisher to the subsidised distributor. It does not in itself constitute a solution to the problems.

Encyclopaedia Britannica: Edinburgh to Chicago, print to PC Britannica.com boasts the tagline ‘Sharing Knowledge since 1768’. Today the Encyclopaedia Britannica is an American product, but for over 150 years it was shaped and nurtured in Edinburgh by Scots whose commitment to Enlightenment values of scholarship and utility informed each successive edition since Colin Macfarquar and Andrew Bell published the first 100 fascicles. Macfarquar and Bell modelled their reference work on Diderot and D’Alembert’s French Encylopédie (1750) and Ephraim Chambers’ English compendium Cyclopedia (1728). William Smellie, variously writer, bookseller and publisher, was hired as editor and over three years produced most of the articles, with, he later boasted, the help of scissors, a paste pot and material from his personal library collection. The first edition was published in 6d instalments between 1768 and 1771, and later issued as a threevolume set of 2,659 pages with 160 engravings. The emphasis on utility meant that articles on practical subjects were favoured over literature, history or biography. For instance, Bookkeeping ran for fifty pages, whilst Drama was described in a mere seven lines. The success of the first edition encouraged others as well as the inclusion of more topics. Later editions were testament to the age’s spirit of intellectual curiosity and development, boasting contributors such as Walter Scott, Thomas De Quincey, and James Mill (Finkelstein 2006: 199). Yet it was the 1889 edition, under the later direction of William Robertson Smith that was truly the apotheosis of the century’s scholarship and learning. Twenty-five volumes, comprising 17,000 articles totalling 30,000,000 words, were complemented by 9,000 illustrations. With its range of topics and its elite contributors such as T. H. Huxley, Lord Kelvin, James Frazer, Matthew Arnold and A. C. Swinburne, it was rightly deemed the ‘scholar’s edition’ and continued to be published in Scotland until 1898. The Encyclopaedia’s eventual move from its Scottish home was prefigured by wrangles over pirated editions in the United States that had been intermittently raging since its first publication. This ‘work of British scholarship’ became the sole property of the Americans Horace Hooper and Walter Jackson when they bought the rights from the then-owners A. & C.

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Black in 1898. In partnership with Cambridge University, Hooper and Jackson produced a radical new edition in 1911 in which the long, comprehensive essay of previous issues was replaced by shorter, general survey articles, a template that was to influence other reference works. The 1911 edition boasted 40,000 entries (totalling over 40,000,000 words) written by 1,500 contributors, and in a further break with tradition, was published not in parts but simultaneously. The takeover of such a venerable Scottish institution by American businessmen, ‘on the eve of the new century’, can be seen as ‘a deed very much heralding the pattern of things to come’ (Norrie: 262) namely, the mergers and conglomerations that marked British publishing from the 1960s. In 1929, production of Britannica moved to the United States and company headquarters were established in Chicago in the 1930s. Encyclopaedia Britannica maintained its place as ‘a leader in reference and education publishing’ until the advent of the digital age, when globalisation as well as technological developments challenged, but also o≠ered new opportunities for this repository of knowledge. When Britannica rebu≠ed an o≠er from Microsoft in the 1980s to produce a CD-Rom version of the Encyclopaedia, Microsoft turned to Funk & Wagnalls, whose New Encyclopaedia formed the basis of what eventually became Encarta. (It was an ironic twist on the nineteenth-century legal battle launched by A. & C. Black against Funk & Wagnalls and their pirated edition of the Encyclopaedia.) Even though Britannica had joined forces with Mead Data Central in 1981 to produce the first digital version of an encyclopaedia, Compton’s MultiMedia Encyclopaedia, it did not find it easy to compete in the fast-changing e-environment. The Compton’s CD-Rom was clunky and was soon surpassed by other products such as Grolier’s CDRom that boasted illustrations, video and audio. Encarta, launched in 1993, proved the most serious rival to Britannica. Sales of the print edition of Britannica plummeted, as the company launched its CD-Rom edition in 1994. Although it was criticised for not having the same multi-media ‘experience’ o≠ered by Microsoft’s product, quality of content never seemed the real issue. It was price. Britannica sold for $1,200 while Encarta retailed at just $50 and was often given free as part of PC packages. When financier Jacob Safra purchased the Britannica in 1996, he did so at a cut-down price, so serious were the company’s losses by this time. In 1998 that iconic, if often derided figure of American popular culture, the door-to-door salesman, became a thing of the past as direct sales were abolished. Britannica challenged Encarta with a series of o≠ers and promotions, including free online access for eighteenth months from October 1999. (Such was the response from the public that the site crashed for a week from over-use.)

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The print edition was promoted to work in conjunction with the online version. Boasting that ‘new initiatives for the Web are continuously underway’, Britannica Online claims its basic mission remains unaltered: ‘Our outlook is shaped by our tradition of excellence and an understanding of what knowledge seekers need in the digital age.’ Britannica had revived, not only releasing new online products and collaborating with other internet information providers such as Xrefer, but publishing a revised printed edition (2005). Yet if Encarta was its rival in the 90s, Wikipedia was its bête-noire in the new millennium, with price once more a key issue, for Wikipedia is free and Britannica’s resources accessed by subscription. Accuracy, though, continues to be Britannica’s trump-card. Despite claims that it is only marginally more accurate than Wikipedia, Britannica does not attempt to be a compilation of all material available, but an edited synthesis of facts and opinions by scholars. Journalists at Nature claimed in a 2006 article that their comparison between Wikipedia and Britannica Online revealed that Britannica was ‘only 30% more accurate’ than Wikipedia. Rebuttals ensued in both Nature and the pages of The Times and the New York Times. The crux of Britannica’s argument was that the ‘errors’ could be claimed as matters of opinion by the scholar-authors and that ‘errors of omission’ were not mistakes but detail left out for editorial ‘style and readability’ (Economist, 4 Jan. 2006, 65–6). Like the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, which has also been reshaped as an online tool and commodity, Britannica’s brand image is underpinned by its tradition of being verifiable and trustworthy. Fostering this image is its board of editors, made up of those Britannica calls ‘the very best minds in the world’, among them Nobel Laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners, professors and social activists. That Lord Sutherland of Houndwood, president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, is among this group is a nod, perhaps, to Britannica’s Scottish roots. The eighteenth-century Britannica attempted to distil the knowledge of the age for practical use. Its twentieth-century incarnation aspired ‘to take all human knowledge, organize it, summarize it, and publish it in a form that people find useful’ (www.britannica.com). The Enlightenment aim of ‘utility’ continues to be a by-word of the Encyclopaedia as it navigates the twenty-first century. Jane Potter

The bookselling market has consolidated throughout the UK – with W. H. Smith, Waterstones and Ottakars (to be absorbed by Waterstones in 2006) accounting for half of all sales by 2001. These chains are certainly perceived as less open to smaller publishers generally and

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Scottish publishers in particular. A system of central buying is practised by these retail chains whereby orders are placed by a central purchasing manager generally located at head o∞ce – the London or Swindon perspective noted already. (Previous practice allowed each individual store manager or subject buyer to place separate orders.) This has had the e≠ect of a homogenisation of title buying which, critics argue, militates against small publishers who produce only a handful of titles a year and against titles which may seem to have a Scottish appeal only. The rationale behind such a system is that less time is taken up seeing the representatives of each publisher and that the discount structures are simplified. There is anecdotal evidence, at least, from the publishers interviewed in 2002 to suggest that titles published in Scotland do not fare well under central buying schemes as they come from small publishers and/or are not viewed as appropriate for a UK market. The booksellers argue, in their defence, that the dedicated Scottish sections of their bookshops make up for this. Independent retailers buy smaller quantities than wholesalers and the chains and the discounts given to them are generally lower but their presence, particularly outside the major cities, can make a di≠erence to small publishers whose print runs are limited and whose market is distinctively Scottish. In some cases, titles may only be available through the independents, as their potential is deemed too small for either the wholesalers or chains. In the same way, tourist outlets and other organisations such as the National Trust for Scotland, for example, may constitute valuable outlets for some titles. The past decade has seen an erosion of Scottish-owned bookselling companies as two long-established booksellers, John Smith & Son of Glasgow and James Thin of Edinburgh, were put into receivership or bought over. The same process has happened in the library supply market. The control of most Scottish retail outlets, therefore, is located outside Scotland, a development seen by those within the Scottish publishing industry as being undesirable. These vital links in the supply chain are geographically distant from the Scottish market and, as stressed already, hold no particular remit to promote books from Scotland. In 1992 66 per cent of the companies surveyed sold their books in England but only 28 per cent employed representatives there. In 2002 the proportions remained approximately the same. However, overseas exports had become more significant. Whereas in 1992 less than 50 per cent of firms had much if any export turnover, in 2002 only 16 per cent considered it unprofitable. This may be due to the increased use of the world wide web: 68 per cent of Scottish publishers in 2002 sold through their own websites and now have the opportunity for more

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concentrated exposure through Scottish Books Online. There was no indication as to the value of these internet sales in 2002 and the publishers surveyed agreed that to have a selling site was particularly useful as a promotional tool and as a way of building up rudimentary data on customer preferences. ‘Conventional’, that is non-www, methods of exporting remain unattractive to many Scottish publishers. This is not surprising given average discounts of between 50 per cent and to 70 per cent which go to wholesalers or retail outlets, as well as average commissions of 10 per cent–15 per cent to overseas sales agents and representatives, royalties to the author and freight or packing costs. In 1992, the Frankfurt Book Fair was by far (77 per cent) the most important exhibition for Scottish publishers with the American Booksellers Association (ABA) meeting, although second, of relatively minor significance (17 per cent). This remained relatively unchanged in 2002 although specialist fairs such as Bologna (for children’s books) continue to be vital to the appropriate specialist publishers. Of Scottish publishers, 47 per cent had attended book fairs abroad in the past year in 2002. Those that had not cited various reasons: nature of products too home-based; representation done by proxy; high cost of attending book fairs; nature of products not suited to rights selling; and parent company already represented. The predominance of Frankfurt might be explained partly on cost grounds but it can be questioned in terms of the likely markets for Scottish content as opposed to books published from Scotland. For Scottish-content titles, the markets could be, once again as they were before the First World War, mainly in the Commonwealth, with North America being cited by most publishers as an obvious target as it had been for Nelson’s and Blackie. The notion of a Scottish diaspora or people claiming Scottish heritage in the USA is often evoked as a tantalising possibility but it remains a notoriously di∞cult market to reach and serve with the exception of certain wellattended clan gatherings and Highland Games. The reasons for the di∞culty are unclear but anecdotal evidence suggests that most people claiming Scottish ancestry are only interested in historical titles, and not titles relating to contemporary Scotland, and that there is a great confusion between Celtic countries in the USA where Irish is often taken as shorthand for every Celtic culture. The Scottish Publishers Association co-ordinates pan-industry initiatives including attendance at book fairs. Over the past twenty years the SPA has grown in strength and reputation. As an interface between the industry and other bodies, state and commercial, it has been an e≠ective lobbyist and driver for change. Given the fragmented and small-scale nature of the industry in Scotland and the real opportuni-

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ties and threats that exist, the importance of such a proactive industry body, and the role it plays in ensuring a partnership approach to sector issues and challenges, should not be underestimated. However, the SPA is dependent on core funding for its survival; the current fees it levies from members proportionate to their size is not su∞cient to cover the costs of all its activities. It is dependent on funding from the SAC and other governmental sources, and will continue to be so for the immediate future. The 2000 National Cultural Strategy for Scotland (and the later, more detailed report of the Cultural Commission) placed great emphasis on the goals of strengthening and promoting Scottish cultural activity and artefacts and this found a practical direction within the Cultural Industries policies of Scottish Enterprise. Yet both strategy and policies emphasised the exploitation of screen-based and electronic media in the pursuit of these goals and paid little or no attention to the publishing industry and the issues, cultural and economic, raised. Both the Scottish Executive and Scottish Enterprise when challenged with this neglect, and their corresponding seduction by the glamour of TV and film, passed the buck to the SAC as if writing and publishing were not an essential part of the cultural industries but a dilettante accretion. The SAC in its turn will be absorbed within Creative Scotland, with its likely greater emphasis on the more expensive screen-based activities. There are benefits and disadvantages to the definition of publishing as a ‘cultural industry’: it enjoys a particular public esteem; this is often reflected a high level of potential recruits to its workforce; the business aspects of its operation are often undervalued; there are continuing skills shortages in particular areas of that operation; and responsibility for its nurturing, support and development is often perceived as falling between the two briefs of arts and industry – to its neglect. However, this cannot be allowed to happen and collaboration must underpin future approaches to publishing in Scotland. A recognition of the cultural worth of publishing in carrying Scottish values, representations of its communities, past and present, to audiences here and in the other nations of the world must be accompanied by an acknowledgment of its economic and employment impact that includes its role as a source and a training ground for other ‘high profile’ media such as film and broadcasting. Scotland is almost uniquely situated, in terms of its devolved government, its priorities in education, social inclusion, culture and economic development, to create such collaborative structures to sustain publishing in Scotland through the early decades of the twenty-first century. Encouragement and maintenance of a healthy competitive marketplace to ensure creativity, quality, pluralism and

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consumer choice will paradoxically entail the involvement of the state at some point. This involvement will range from proactive intervention to positive encouragement. The jury is out as to what, if anything, the Scottish Executive, and its planned agency Creative Scotland, will provide within that spectrum. Yet books need readers more than they require governments. Here prospects are less opaque but discouraging. By the early 1990s the emergence of chain bookshops in the USA and the UK energised sales by o≠ering a much wider selection of titles than were available in independent bookshops, and drew customers with reading spaces, cafes and special events. Between 1986 and 1996 unit sales jumped by 300 million in the USA alone. The abolition of Resale Price Maintenance in the UK through the lapse of the Net Book Agreement in 1995 seemed to prove that lower prices result in a more than proportionate jump in unit sales, leading to higher overall spending. Since the mid-1990s, however, the chain bookshop market has stabilised and unit sales have remained on a plateau. Growing sales through online services such as Amazon or through supermarkets with heavy discounts on bestselling titles have come at the expense of other distribution channels. Yet while sales are stable, the number of readers seems to be declining. Reading for pleasure competes with other activities for disposable time: television may no longer be the major rival, and indeed may promote reading books in a number of ways such as the Richard and Judy Book Club; and since 2000 we have seen growth in the use of the web and internet in leisure activities as well as the proliferation of games consoles and video games. Within the UK, Scotland has the secondlowest consumption of books of all the ITV regions. The profile of the representative reader in Scotland today would acknowledge his or her extensive, indeed eclectic, reading, influenced by publicity and promotion but also by word of mouth recommendations including book groups. (Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone when first published in a small hardback print run was a beneficiary of word of mouth praise.) The average reader in the UK – there are no disaggregated figures available – will spend six hours a week reading for pleasure which breaks down to eleven minutes a day on fiction, six minutes a day on non-fiction, two minutes on reference books, seventeen minutes on newspapers, five minutes on magazines and seven minutes on online press and the internet. This reading profile contrasts with the average time spent on watching television (three and a half hours a day) and spent listening to the radio (three hours a day). However, these figures should be treated with scepticism just because they are averages. The true situation is of extensive reading: fewer people are reading more.

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Just over 40 per cent of the UK population does not read any books at all. A 2000 UK report on reading indicated that ‘those who enjoy reading from an early age tend never to give up the habit, and though during some stages in life they may be forced by their circumstances to read less than they would like, they usually become “heavy” readers again once they get the chance’ (BML: 10). Reading has become a lifestyle choice and the preference of identifiable and distinct sub-groups, who see it as retaining a high degree of ‘cultural capital’. Diverse forms of intervention are being used to attempt to reverse this situation and increase the number of readers overall. There are thirtytwo reader development network librarians in Scotland o≠ering advice and assistance both directly and online. They provide an emphasis on Scottish writing for Scotland but not to the exclusion of a wider range of reading. The Scottish Executive have developed a programme of activity to support the development of the reading habit in Scotland, particularly among socially deprived groups. Its Home Reading campaign was designed to raise the value of home reading, especially by fathers to sons, and to motivate parents of children under 8 in socially deprived groups to read more to and with their o≠spring. Communal reading was underpinned in 2007 when Edinburgh, already designated as a City of Literature, adopted Stevenson’s Kidnapped as its citizens’ reading, distributing free copies and organising a number of themed events to encourage participation in ‘one city, one book’. These initiatives, and others, are an investment for the future; again the jury is out as to whether they will create a ‘reading nation’ again that can support a vital book sector, including authors whose work informs and shapes the nation’s sense of itself.

CONTRIBUTORS

Rosemary Addison studied printing and publishing at Napier College of Commerce and Technology (1975–8), and worked during student holidays for a range of Scottish publishing houses. She ran a freelance proofreading and editing service from 1985 until 1996. She obtained a Ph.D. from Edinburgh College of Art/Heriot Watt University (1997–2004). One of the founders of Women in Publishing in Edinburgh in 1991, she has written pieces for the Scottish Book Collector on children’s writers, illustrators and engravers, and on Salamander Press. Recent contributions to the Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women (Edinburgh University Press, 2006) resulted from membership of the Scottish Women’s History Network since 1998. Damian Atkinson, Ph.D., now retired, has been a teacher, Open University consultant and librarian. He has published The Selected Letters of W. E. Henley and The Correspondence of John Stephen Farmer and W. E. Henley on their Dictionary of Slang, 1890–1904. He is a contributor to the Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. He is currently working on an edition of Henley’s letters to Robert Louis Stevenson to be followed by an edition of those to Charles Whibley. Moira Burgess is a novelist, short story writer and literary historian who very occasionally writes verse. After some years devoted to nonfiction, a novel is with an agent and others are in the pipeline. She recently graduated Ph.D. at Glasgow University with a thesis on the work of Naomi Mitchison. Richard Butt is head of Media, Communication and Sociology at 478

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Queen Margaret University College, Edinburgh. His research interests include theories of media representation, screen adaptation and authorship, and the history of Scottish media. He is creator of the multimedia Films of Scotland Documentaries website (http://sites.scran.co.uk/films_of_scotland/). Ken Cockburn worked for many years at the Scottish Poetry Library; with Alec Finlay he established and ran pocketbooks, an awardwinning series of books of poetry and visual art (1999–2002). His poems are collected in Souvenirs and Homelands (1995) and in many anthologies. He edited Ian Hamilton Finlay’s The Dancers Inherit the Party: Early Stories, Plays & Poems (2004). Richard A. V. Cox, formerly connected with the Celtic Departments at Glasgow and then Aberdeen, currently lectures at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig. His publications include The Gaelic Place-Names of Carloway, Isle of Lewis (2002) and The Language of the Ogam Inscriptions of Scotland (1999). John Crawford is library research o∞cer at Glasgow Caledonian University where he is also university copyright adviser. He also leads and manages research projects. He holds an M.A. by research from the University of Strathclyde and a Ph.D. from Glasgow Caledonian University. He has also authored some fifty-eight journal articles and conference papers. He is a member of the Council of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals and chairs one of its specialist groups, the Library and Information History Group. He is also an external examiner at Brighton University. Linda Dryden is Reader in Literature and Culture at Napier University, Edinburgh. Her publications include Joseph Conrad and the Imperial Romance (2000) and The Modern Gothic and Literary Doubles: Stevenson, Wilde and Wells (2003). Dr Dryden is co-editor of the Journal of Stevenson Studies. Richard Dury is Associate Professor of English Language at Bergamo University, Italy. He has published numerous articles on Stevenson, as well as The Annotated Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1993) and a critical edition of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (2004) for Edinburgh University Press. Suzanne Ebel is an independent researcher. She is currently a consultant researcher in the further education sector in Scotland. She was

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awarded her doctorate in 2003 and her main field of study was the creation of new media writing and narratives within online communities. As computer network interactions are now an integral part of our popular culture, she is particularly interested in the way that learning occurs within a virtual environment that is not pedagogical yet clearly encourages apprenticeship and learning. Further, the mechanics of reading hyperfiction demand specific actions on behalf of the reader/viewer and provide new areas for research. David Finkelstein is Research Professor of Media and Print Culture at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh. Publications include The House of Blackwood: Author-Publisher Relations in the Victorian Era (2002), co-authorship of Introduction to Book History (2005), and as co-editor The Book History Reader (2001 and 2006). Linda Fleming is currently a research assistant working on the SAPPHIRE project at Napier University. She completed her Ph.D. on Jewish migration to Glasgow in the 1930s at the University of Glasgow. Duncan Glen is a poet and Emeritus Professor of Visual Communication at Nottingham Trent University. His publications include Hugh MacDiarmid and the Scottish Renaissance (1964), Autobiography of a Poet (1986), Printing type designs: a new history from Gutenberg to 2000 (2001) and Small press publishers of Scotland: idealists and romantics 1922–2006 (2006). He edited Akros magazine through fifty-one numbers from August 1965 and has done much to promote Scottish poets and artists. He was a friend and early champion of Hugh MacDiarmid and Ian Hamilton Finlay among others. Kate Macdonald is a researcher at the Department of English at the University of Ghent. Her research focuses on late Victorian periodical publishing and on the middlebrow fiction of the first half of the twentieth century. She is editor of the John Buchan Journal and the author of a forthcoming companion to Buchan’s mystery fiction for McFarland & Co. Joseph McAleer, an independent scholar, holds a doctorate in history from Oxford University. Specialising in the history of publishing and reading habits, he is the author of numerous articles and two books, Popular Reading and publishing in Britain, 1914–1950 (1992), and Passion’s Fortune: The Story of Mills & Boon (1999).

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Alistair McCleery is Professor of Literature and Culture and director of the Scottish Centre for the Book at Napier University, Edinburgh. He is co-editor of The Bibliotheck. His publications include The Porpoise Press, 1922–1939 (1988) and the multimedia CD-ROM The Book (2001). He is co-editor with David Finkelstein of The Book History Reader (2001 and 2006), and Introduction to Book History (2005). He has published articles on book history and print culture in journals such as Publishing History and Book History. Margery Palmer McCulloch is currently Research Fellow in Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow and Co-editor of Scottish Studies Review. Her most recent book is Modernism and Nationalism: Literature and Society in Scotland 1918–1939 (2004). Her Scottish Modernism and its Contexts is forthcoming from Edinburgh University Press. Louise Milne teaches at Napier University and Edinburgh College of Art. She has recently completed a documentary on John Calder. Andrew Nash is a lecturer in English Literature at the University of Reading. He has written numerous essays on Scottish literature and the history of publishing and his books include Kailyard and Scottish Literature (2007), (ed.) The Culture of Collected Editions (2003) and (co-ed.) Literary Cultures and the Material Book (2007). Tom Normand is Senior Lecturer in the School of Art History at the University of St Andrews. His research interests include nineteenthand twentieth-century British art, developments in Scottish art and culture in the twentieth century and the history of photography in Scotland. His book publications are Ken Currie; Details of a Journey (2002), Calum Colvin; Ossian, Fragments of Ancient Poetry (2002), The Modern Scot: Modernism and Nationalism in Scottish Art 1928–1955 (2000). Sarah Pedersen, Ph.D. is course leader for the M.Sc. Publishing Studies and M.Sc. Publishing with Journalism courses at the Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen. Her research interests include publishing history, women and the media, and computer-mediated communication. She is the chairperson of the UK Association for Publishing Education. Jane Potter is Senior Lecturer in Publishing at Oxford Brookes University. Her book Boys in Khaki, Girls in Print: Women’s Literary

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Responses to the Great War, 1914–1918 is published by Oxford University Press (2006). Her other publications include ‘Valiant Heroines or Pacific Ladies? Women in War and Peace’ in The Routledge History of Women in Europe Since 1700 (2005), edited by Deborah Simonton, and ‘For Country, Conscience and Commerce: Publishers and Publishing 1914–1918’ in Publishing in the First World War: Essays in Book History (2007) (Palgrave Macmillan), edited by Mary Hammond and Shafquat Towheed. She is also editor of the Women’s History Magazine. Siân Reynolds is Professor (Emerita) of French at the University of Stirling. Her doctoral thesis was on the printing trade in nineteenthcentury France, and as well as works on French history, she is the author of Britannica’s Typesetters: Women Compositors in Edwardian Edinburgh (1989), and a co-editor of The Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women (2006). Henry R. Sefton is an Honorary Senior Lecturer in Church History at the University of Aberdeen. He was Master of Christ’s College, Aberdeen from 1982–1992. He was ordained a minister of the Church of Scotland in 1957. His publications include John Knox (1993). Claire Squires is Senior Lecturer in Publishing at the Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies at Oxford Brookes University, and Programme Leader for the MAs in Publishing. She is the author of Philip Pullman, Master Storyteller: A Guide to the Worlds of His Dark Materials (2006) (Continuum), and Marketing Literature: The Making of Contemporary Writing in Britain (2007) (Palgrave). Previously she worked at Hodder & Stoughton Publishers. Iain Stevenson is Professor of Publishing at the Centre for Publishing, University College, London. He was previously Professor of Publishing Studies at City University, London and has worked for a number of British and international publishers, including Longman, Macmillan, Pinter and the Stationery O∞ce. He was the founder of the environmental publisher Belhaven Press. His research focuses on book history and scholarly communication and he is currently working on a history of British publishing in the twentieth century. Zsuzsanna Varga is Research Fellow at De Montfort University, Leicester. She obtained a Ph.D. from Edinburgh University on the work of Margaret Oliphant in 2004, and has worked as a researcher in English and comparative literary studies. She is managing editor of

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Cencrastus magazine. Her research interests are primarily located in nineteenth- and twentieth-century bibliography and literary culture. Simon Ward graduated from the University of St Andrews with a degree in philosophy in 1998 before attaining an M.Sc. in Social Research from Napier University. After working as a bookseller in Edinburgh for seven years he went on to complete an M.Sc. in Information and Library Studies at the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen. He is a Research Associate at the Scottish Centre for the Book where he is currently indexing the Booksellers Association (Scottish branch) archive. Helen Williams is an independent researcher. She studied Russian at Durham University and has an M.Phil. by research on nineteenthcentury Russian revolutionary publications, and a general interest in nineteenth- and twentieth-century book history. She has worked for both the British Library and the National Library of Scotland, and has held various research posts.

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INDEX

Page numbers in italics denotes an illustration Aarseth, Espen, 460, 463 Abacus, 67 Aberdeen, 5, 18, 84, 468 Aberdeen Free Press, 231 Aberdeen University Press (AUP), 5, 142, 145, 198, 320–1, 326, 350–1 Aberdeen’s People’s Press, 27 academic publishing, 198, 296, 314, 319, 321, 326, 327, 328–9 challenges faced by, 327–8 and Edinburgh University Press, 319–21 and electronic journals, 328 journals, 296, 314, 319 ‘serials crisis’ in university libraries, 327, 328 Academic Publishing (firm), 198 Acair, 287, 288 Ackroyd, Peter, 415 Adam, Robert Moyes, 173, 176 Adams, Ellinor Davenport, 152 Addison, Rosemary, 15, 61–3, 94, 148–67, 155–8, 161–5, 245–8, 252–5 Adobe Systems Inc., 118, 119 advances, author, 426, 428 Adventure, 372, 373 Adventure Land, xx advertising, 25, 63 Agbabi, Patience, 201 agents, literary see literary agents Airdrie public library, 14, 42, 43–4 Akros, 11, 184, 256–8, 259, 267, 406, 408 Akros Publishing, 146, 406 Albany Book Co., 144 Alcott, Louisa May, 354 Allan, Dot, 244 Makeshift, 238 Allan, John Robertson, 165 Allen, Nick, 165 Allen, Walter, 402 Altick, Richard D., 312 Amalgamated Press, 360, 371, 372, 373, 377, 378

Amazon, 82, 447, 476 American Booksellers Association (ABA), 474 And, Miekal, 461 And Thus Will I Freely Sing (anthology), 269 Anderson, Ian, 167 Andrew, Hugh, 80, 147, 264 Angus, Marion, 39, 236, 243 Annan, James Craig, 155, 174 Annan, Thomas, 170 The Old Closes and Streets of Glasgow, 170, 174 Annand, J. K., 268 annuals, children’s, 354, 360–1, 372 anthologies, 269 Aonghas Pàdraig Caimbeul, 293 Apple Macintosh, 117–18 Argyll Publications, 270 Armitage, Simon, 269 artist’s books (livres d’artistes), 148, 149, 175, 176 Arts Council of Great Britain, 406 Arts and Crafts, 151, 153 Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, 154 Arts Review (radio programme), 25 Associated Book Publishers Ltd, 326 Associated Booksellers of Great Britain and Ireland, 31, 83, 185 Association for Scottish Literary Studies (ASLS), 267 Atkins, Anna, 169 Atkinson, Damian, 220–2 atlases see cartographic publishing Atwood, Margaret, 200 Auden, W. H., 246–7 Auriol, George, 159 Australia, 6 emigration to, 3, 4 Author, The, 390 authors, 387, 388–408 1880–1914, 388–92 1914–45, 392–3, 395–8, 401–2

503

504

edinburgh history of the book in scotland

authors (cont.) 1945–80, 402–3, 405–8 post-1980, 425–6 advances to, 426, 428 affiliated sources of income, 424–5 and American market, 390 and arrival of paperbacks, 423–4 and book clubs, 423 broadcasting as additional source of income, 402–3 and celebrity status, 365, 392 and censorship, 395–6 children’s top ten, 444 commercial market for, 416–17 and contracts, 414 ‘drift’ south, 271, 273, 457 earnings, 427–8 funding of, 406, 424–5 and half-profits system, 66, 385, 391, 410, 411 impact of decline of three-volume novel, 388, 391 and libraries, 411 market expansion and professionalisation, 388, 390, 411–13 and new media, 421–4 post-war problems encountered, 402 and Public Lending Right, 402, 425 remuneration methods, 66, 385–6, 391 and royalty system, 66, 386, 391, 412 SAC funding of, 271 SAC survey on (2001), 426–9 sale of copyright 385–6, 410–11 seeking alternative employment, 391 and subsidiary rights, 412–13, 414, 426 success of in London, 408 authorship, economics of, 409–30 Bacon, G. W., 340 Bailey, Henry Hamilton Surgery of Modern Warfare, 334 Bailie, The (periodical), 211 Baillie, John Diary of Private Prayer, 306 Bain, Robert, 238 Ballantyne & Hanson, 125, 129 Ballantyne, James, 93 Ballantyne, John, 385 Ballantyne, R. M., 110, 295, 352, 354, 359, 386 The Coral Island, 386, 410 selling of copyright on books, 410–11 serial written for Life and Work, 308 The Young Fur-Traders, 93, 386 Ballatis of Luve, 145 Balsilles, Rev. David, 153–4 Bancroft, John Sellers, 105 banking, 55 Banks, Ian, 29 Bannerman, David Armitage Birds of the British Isles, 342 Barclay, William, 302 Daily Study Bible, 309 Bards of Galloway, The, 213 Baring Gould, S., 354

Barke, James, 192, 244 Barnes, Albert, 376 Barrie, J. M., 17, 166, 205, 217, 220, 416, 417 Better Dead, 391 The Little Minister, 22 Sentimental Tommy, 390 wealth of, 391–2 Barrington Stoke, 329 Bartholomew & Son, John, 3, 34, 304, 338–40, 350 Bartholomew I, John, 338 Bartholomew II, John, 338 Bartholomew IV, John, 339 Bartholomew, John George, 338, 339 Bartram, Alan Five Hundred Years of Book Design, 131 Bash Street Kids, 380 Baskerville, John, 100 Bates, H. E., 157 Travels through the Woods, 156, 157 Baxendale, Leo, 370, 375, 379–81 Baxter, Charles, 220 Baynes, Spencer, 300 BBC (British Broadcasting Company), 18–19, 23–4, 26, 27–8, 161 BBC Scottish Home Service, 25 Beahm, George Muggles and Magic, 450 Beano, 360, 368, 370, 373, 374, 375, 376, 377–8, 379, 380, 382 Beardsley, Aubrey, 215, 216 Beaton, M.C., 29 Becher, T. and Young, B., 317 Beckett, Samuel, 262 Beechgrove Garden, The (television programme), 28 Bell & Bain, 143–4 Bell & Bradfute, 315 Bell, Andrew, 470 Bell, Eddie, 60 Bell, J. J., 211–12, 225 Bell, John, 305 Bell, Robert Fitzroy, 220 Belloc, Hilaire, 189 Bennett, Alfred, 331 Bennett, Arnold, 188 Bentley & Son, Richard, 362 Benton, Linn Boyd, 104 Berne Convention (1887), 186 Berry, W. Turner and Johnson, A. F. Catalogue of Specimens of Printing Types, 127, 129 Bertelsmann, 456–7 Bertram & Sons, James, 99 Beryl the Peril, 380 bestsellers, 392 Better Books, 263 Beuys, Joseph, 259 Bezos, Jeff, 82 Bible, 192, 193–4, 296, 302–3, 304, 310, 323 Bilcliffe, Roger, 155 binding see bookbinding Birlinn, 10, 67, 80, 147, 202, 261, 264, 287, 465

index Bisacre, David, 333 Bisacre, Frederick F. P., 332 Bisacre, G. H. (Harry), 333 Black & White, 67 Black, A.&C., 34, 186, 193–4, 197, 347, 356 Black Ace Books, 269 Black, Adam, 347 Black, C. S., 226 Black, James Tait, 347 Black, Joseph, 330 Black, Robin, 242 Black, William, 204–5, 209–10 Blackadder, Mark, 147 Blackie & Son, 3, 8, 34, 73, 182, 353–5, 365 acquisition of by Thomson, 32, 333, 355 association with Clydesdale Bank, 55 bindings, 159 ceases trading, 255, 323, 327, 333 and children’s books, 193, 354–5, 361 educational publishing, 193, 313–14, 317, 353–4, 355 and First World War, 354–5 founding of, 55, 138 overseas markets, 355 printing works, 58, 136–7, 141, 193, 355 reference works, 350 and reward books, 353, 354 scientific publishing, 296, 332–3 and Second World War, 137, 316, 355 Blackie, John, 55, 155, 353 Blackie, John Alexander (‘Jack’), 354, 355 Blackie, John Stewart, 355 Blackie, Nansie, 306 Blackie, Walter G., 314, 332 Blackie’s Children’s Annual, 354 Blackwell, 90, 335 Blackwood & Sons, William, 3, 8, 33, 34, 66, 125, 182, 183, 191, 204, 205, 219, 227, 233–6, 386, 417, 418 Blackwood, George, 419 Blackwood, John, 191 Blackwood’s Magazine, 183, 191, 205, 225, 229 Blaikie, W. B., 125, 151, 154 Blake, George, 192, 241, 244, 400 Heart of Scotland, 241 Blampied, Edmund, 160 Blast!, 229 Bliss, Douglas Percy, 140 Bloomsbury, 197, 449 Bodoni, Giambattista, 100 Bogie Man, The, 382 Bold, Alan, 232 Bold, Christine, 258 Bone, Captain William Capstan Bars, 136 Merchantman Rearmed, 136 Bone, Muirhead, 136 Bone, Vivian, 321 Bonham-Carter, Victor, 407 book clubs, 86, 195, 393, 396, 423, 447 Book of Common Prayer, 129 book covers, 104, 113 book fairs, 474

505

book festivals 9, 452, 454; see also Edinburgh International Book Festival Book Society, 195, 396, 423 book tokens, 195 Book Trust, 327 bookbinding, 57, 96, 113–15, 133, 139, 159, 167 Booker Prize, 62, 264–5, 408 Bookman (magazine), 22, 219 book(s), 95–121 annual world production, 8 challenging of by new media, 11, 13 conventions and appearance of, 109–10 definition, 95 distribution, 64 future of, 455–77 marketing and promotion of, 63 number of titles published, 86, 466 prices of, 59, 60, 182, 186 print runs, 59–60 size of, 112 BooksfromScotland website, 82, 463 Booksellers Association of Great Britain and Ireland, 83, 90 Booksellers Charter Group, 87 bookselling/booksellers, 15, 182, 472–3 crisis in, 185 internet, 70, 82, 91, 447, 473–4, 476 and Net Book Agreement, 185 and supermarkets, 91, 476 see also bookshops bookshops, 83–94, 446–7, 456 as alternative libraries, 447 and central buying system, 473 distribution problems, 87 emergence of chain, 87–8, 476 geographical distribution, 83–4 government, 344 and Net Book Agreement, 85–6, 90 opening of own lending libraries, 85 and paperbacks, 87 publication of own books, 83 railway, 85, 88, 89, 431 survival factors, 84–5 Bòrd na Gàidhlig, 293 Border Television, 26, 27 Born, Max Atomic Physics, 332–3 Bough, Sam, 168 Bow, Clara, 19 Boxer, Charlie, 61 Boyle, Jimmy, 274 boys’ papers, 372–3, 374, 377, 379, 382; see also comics Bradbury, Malcolm, 454 Brandt, Bill The English at Home, 180 Branford, Frederick Victor Five Poems, 397 Braveheart, 455 BRAW (Books, Reading and Writing), 366 Brazil, Angela, 354 Breathing Wall, The, 461 Brendel, Florenz Walter, 117 Brenton, Arthur, 232

506

edinburgh history of the book in scotland

Brereton, Captain, 354, 355, 360 Breslin, Theresa, 365–6 Bride of Lammermoor, The (film), 17 Bridie, James, 243 British Association for the Advancement of Science, 331 British Book Awards, 184 British Broadcasting Company see BBC British Film Institute, 22 British Printing and Communications Corporation, 142 British Standards Institution, 112 British Typographia, 151 British Weekly, 217 broadcasting see radio; television Brockhaus, F. A., 96 Brogan, Denis, 75 Bronowski, Jacob, 26 Broons, The, 376–7 Broughton, Rhoda, 362 Brown, Curtis, 38 Brown, George Douglas, 188, 190, 391 The House with the Green Shutters, 219, 223 Brown, George Mackay, 176–7, 184, 250, 251, 306, 365, 373, 415 Brown, George Mackenzie, 73 Brown, Gordon, 64, 321 Brown, Jenny, 446, 452–3 Brown, William, 83 Bruce, George, 258 Bruce, R. T. Hamilton, 220 Brunet-Debaines, A., 168 Brunton Report (1963), 316 Bryce & Sons, David, 83 Buchan, James, 306 Buchan, John, 160, 188–90, 219, 224, 225, 365, 419–21 and First World War, 225 ‘Home Thoughts of Abroad’, 226 and MacDiarmid, 234 magazines contributed to, 419 Memory Hold-the-Door, 71 Mr Standfast, 225 and Nelsons, 73, 75, 110, 188–90, 313, 315–16, 420 Nelson’s History of the War, 189 Prester John, 187, 420 as publisher, 188–90 radio serialisations, 421 royalty payments, 420 The Thirty-Nine Steps, 420, 422 Buckingham Press, 197 Bukowski, Charles, 201 Bullet, 382 Bullimore, Tom, 167 Bullock Report (1975), 317 Bunty, 379 Burgess, Moira, 38–40 Burn-Murdoch, W. G., 152 Burnett, David, 165 Burns Chronicle, 231 Burns Clubs, 213 Burns, John, 258

Burns, Robert, 50–1, 125, 152, 153 Burnside, John, 269, 408 Burroughs, William, 201 Burton, Mary, 151 Butlin, Ron, 61 Butt, Dennis, 361–2 Butt, Richard, 13, 16–30 Butterworths, 326–7 Byng, Jamie, 57, 198, 199–201, 271, 273, 275, 467 Byrne, John, 29, 62 Cabairneach, An, 287 Cadenhead, James, 152 Cairns, Alison, 161 Cairns, David S., 303 Cairns, Walter, 57, 259, 274 Calder, Jenni, 258, 275 Calder, John, 260, 261–3, 452 Calder, Professor William, 319 Callum Macdonald Memorial Fund, 269 Cambridge University Press (CUP), 140, 156 Cameron, David Young, 155 Cameron, Katharine, 153, 155, 159, 160 Campbell, Bill, 57, 64, 65 Campbell, Donald, 306 Campbell Harper Films, 19 Campbell, John Gregorson, 216 Campbell, John Lorne, 10 Campbell, R. W., 225 Campbeltown Public Library, 46 Camus, Albert, 75 Canadian International Thomson, 55 Cànan, 294 Canongate, 10, 64, 67, 144, 146, 166, 184, 198, 199–201, 261, 263–4, 265, 274–5, 287, 457, 464, 465 and Byng, 57, 199–201, 271, 273, 275, 467 founding, 274 Kelpie series, 199, 274, 363–6, 364 religious publishing, 310 SAC funding of, 263, 270–1 series launched by, 274 Canongate Classics, 199, 274–5, 424 Cape, Jonathan, 408 Carcanet Press, 184, 251, 408 Carmichael, Alexander, 152, 282 Carmichael, Charlotte, 436 Carmina Gadelica, 282 Carnegie, Andrew, 2–3, 14, 41, 42, 43, 44 Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, 43–4 Carroll, Lewis, 359–60 Alice in Wonderland, 352 Carswell, Catherine, 39, 240, 241 The Camomile, 238 Open the Door!, 238 The Savage Pilgrimage, 396 Carter, Harry, 128 cartographic publishing, 296, 336, 337–41 Caslon Old Face, 127, 128, 129, 130 Castells, Manuel, 462 catalogues, 63 CD-ROM reference material, 351 Celtic Garland, The, 282

index Celtic Magazine, 282 Celtic Movement, 215, 216 Celtic symbolism, 151 Cencrastus ( journal), 11, 69, 184, 256, 258–9, 267 censorship, 395–6 Cerf, Vinton Gray, 116 Chace Act (1891), 186, 207, 390 Chalmers, Hector, 168 Chambers, A. S. (Tony), 56, 349 Chambers, C. E. S., 56 Chambers, W. & R., 3, 56–7, 66, 125, 197, 297, 468 and educational publishing, 138, 193, 313, 316, 317, 349 and reference publishing, 55, 193, 346 Chambers Dictionary, 347, 347, 349 Chambers Encyclopaedia, 193, 197 Chambers Harrap, 346, 349–50, 464 Chambers’ Journal, 56, 183, 193, 214, 369 Chambers, R. S., 56 Channel 4, 28 chapbooks, 95, 161; see also Saltire Chapbooks Chapman & Hall, 333 Chapman New Writers series, 268 Chapman (periodical), 11, 69, 166, 267, 268, 269 Charteris, Archibald Hamilton, 301, 307–8 Chartier, Roger, 432 Chatto & Windus, 184 Child, John Industrial Relations in the British Printing Industry, 131 children’s books, 297, 352–67, 372 children’s reading habits, 387, 442–6, 449 China, 174 Chiswick Press, 124 Christian Leader, The, 217 Christie, Agatha, 192 Church of Scotland, 305, 307, 436 Churchill, J. A., 334 Churchill Livingstone, 296, 334–5, 464, 468 cinema, 13, 458 pre-1920, 17–18 in 1920s/30s, 19–21, 22 in 1980s/90s, 29–30 and authors, 421, 422–3 film adaptations of books, 195–6 formation of societies, 22 and Hollywood, 19–21 Citizen’s Atlas, 339, 340 Civil List pension, 425 Clair, Colin A History of Printing in Britain, 131 Clann Tuirc, 294 Clàr, 293 Clark-Constable, 139 Clark, Edward, 138 Clark, John Maurice, 303, 304 Clark, Kenneth, 26 Clark, R.& R., 59, 107, 108, 124, 125, 129–31, 138–9, 162, 164, 194 Clark, Robert, 125

507

Clark, T. & T., 296, 303–5, 309 Clark, Thomas, 303, 304 Clark, Thomas George, 303, 304 Clarke & Co, James, 194 Clarke, Hockley, 158 Clay, Richard, 58 Clayton, Kevin, 342 Clephane, James O., 104 Clò Beag, 287 Clò Chailleann, 287 Clowes, William, 58 Clydesdale Bank, 55 Coats jnr, James, 46–7 Cobden-Sanderson, T. J., 124 Coburn, Alvin Langdon, 168 Cockburn, Ken, 94, 178–80 Cocker, W. D., 225 Cockran, Alice, 354 Cois Life, 293 Coleridge, Samuel Ancient Mariner, 130–1 Collected Poems of George Bruce, The, 145 Collins & Son, William, 8, 73, 141–2, 165, 182, 191–3, 194, 196, 296, 297, 323–5 acquisition of by News International, 34, 197–8, 255, 325, 363 acquisitions, 362 bible-printing, 192 book manufacture, 323–4, 325 and children’s books, 324, 356, 359, 360 diversification, 192 educational publishing, 55, 192, 323 employment at, 5, 141 expansion of, 192 founding, 137 New Naturalist series, 335–7 overseas markets and agencies, 6, 191 printing works, 58, 136–7, 138, 192 reward books, 356 and Second World War, 316 Collins Bartholomew, 350 Collins, Sir Godfrey, 77, 192, 324 Collins I, William, 323 Collins II, William, 323 Collins III, William, 323–4, 359 Collins IV, William, 324 Collins Pocket Classics, 186, 324, 358 Collins, W. Jan, 324 Collins, William Hope, 137 Collins, William V (Billy), 324, 335 colour printing, 172 Colvin, Calum, 167 Comic Cuts, 377, 382 comics, 368, 370, 374–82; see also individual titles Community Drama Movement, 238, 243 composition/compositors, 92, 108, 108, 117, 122, 125, 126 hot-metal type machines, 107–9, 116–17 numbers of, 7, 125 women, 131–5 see also Linotype; Monotype Compugraphic Corporation, 116 Comunn Gàidhealach, An, 287

508

edinburgh history of the book in scotland

Comunn Gàidhlig Inbhir Nis (Gaelic Society of Inverness), 289 Concilium (magazine), 34 Concordance to the Bible, 299 Concrete Poetry movement, 178 conglomerates, 348–50, 456 shift from family ownership to, 8, 13, 31, 32–4, 55, 183, 197, 255, 295, 297, 322, 362–3, 425 Conrad, Joseph, 188, 191, 219 Constable, Archibald, 124 Constable, T.& A., 34, 94, 97, 107, 124–5, 126, 127, 138, 144, 194 Constable, Thomas, 124 Cook, Alah, 319 Cooke, Alistair, 26 Cooke, Kingsley, 161 Cooper, James Fenimore, 354 Cooper, Thomas Joshua, 176 copyright, 185, 381, 391, 409, 421 international agreements on, 31, 186, 390, 412 selling of by authors, 385–6, 410–11 Copyright Act (1842), 410 Copyright Act (1911), 182, 190, 421 Cornhill Magazine, 204–5, 411 Cossar, John, 142 Country Life Ltd, 136 Coutts Information Services, 90 Cowan & Co., 6 Cox, Richard A. V., 184, 277–94, 311 Craig, Cairns, 258, 259 Craig, Gordon, 343 Craigie, Professor W. A., 231 Crane, Walter The Decorative Illustration of Books, 124, 153 Crawford Committee on Broadcasting (1926), 24 Crawford, John, 14, 41–53, 433 Crawford, Robert, 268, 405–6, 408 Crawhall, Joseph, 155 Creative Scotland, 475, 476 Crime Club, 192, 194 Criterion, 240 Crockett, S. R., 210, 213, 217, 219, 300, 392, 417 Croft Dickinson, Professor William, 320 Crofters’ Holding Act (1886), 45–6 Cronin, A. J., 306, 393, 402 Crosland, T. W. H., 216 Crow Road, The (television programme), 29 crown octavo, 112 CRTronic direct-entry machine, 116 Cruickshank, Helen, 39, 230, 235, 243, 398 Crùisgean, 287, 289 Crunch, 382 Culloden (docudrama), 26 Culross, 138 Cultural Commission, 475 cultural conservatism, 361–2 cultural industries, 8–9 cultural nationalism, 183, 216, 223 Cunningham & Sons, Robert, 145

Cunninghame Graham, R. B., 39, 77, 193 Cursiter, Stanley, 161, 162 Curwen Press, 109, 140 CVCB (Chatto, Virago, Cape Services and Bodley Head), 63 cybertexts, 460 Dahl, Roald, 449 Daiches, David, 253 Daily Chronicle, 210 Daily Express, 18 Dalai Lama, 199 Dale, David, 2 Dallmeyer, Andrew, 62 Dalrymple, 147 Dandy, 360, 368, 374, 375, 376, 377, 378, 382 Dark Horse, The (magazine), 269 Darling, Frank Fraser, 337 Darnton, Robert The Kiss of Lamourette, 458 Darwin, Charles On the Origin of Species, 331 Davidson, Basil, 176 Davidson, John, 203, 214, 214–15 Davidson, Nevile, 306 Davie, G. E. The Democratic Intellect, 298, 318, 320 Davies, Margaret, 335 Davies, Rhys, 157 Dawson Scott, Mrs C. A., 38 de Bellaigue, Eric, 192, 197–8, 325 de Bernières, Louis, 199 de la Mare, Richard, 135 Demarco, Richard, 165 demy octavo, 112 Denney, James, 302, 305 Dennis the Menace, 375, 376, 379, 382 Dent, J. M., 58 Departure of the Columba from Rothesay Pier, The (film), 17 design and illustration, 102, 103, 148–67, 336 1950s–80s, 165–6 1990s–, 166–7 and Edinburgh, 151–3 and Glasgow, 154–5 newspapers, 160 online, 167 shunning of surrealist and modernist trends, 160–1 social realists, 154 and Traquair, 151, 153–4 and Victorians, 148–51 desktop publishing, 118–19, 172 Desperate Dan, 370, 376, 378 Devine, Tom, 3 devolution, 9–10, 34, 329 Dewar, Donald, 10 Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC), 50 diaspora, Scottish, 75 Dickens, Charles, 130, 209, 447 dictionaries, 347 Dictionary of the Bible, 304 Digby, Alan, 377 Digiset phototypesetter, 116

index digital systems, 116–20 Dillons, 87, 88 Directory of Publishing in Scotland, 33, 414 Disney, Walt, 21 distributors, 469–70 Doig, David, 372 Donald, John, 198, 202, 309 Donaldson, William, 211, 217 Popular Literature in Victorian Scotland, 210 Dott, Dr Eric, 47–8 Dott Memorial Socialist Library (Edinburgh), 14, 47–9 Dott, Peter M’Omish, 47 Double Pica roman, 144 Douglas, David, 152 Douglas, Helen, 167 Doves Press, 124, 125, 135, 153 Doyle, Arthur Conan, 191, 193, 389, 411 A Study in Scarlet, 391 Dr Finlay’s Casebook, 26, 402 Drabble, Margaret, 75–6 drama see plays Drew, Richard, 64 Drouth, The (magazine), 269 Drucker, Johanna, 148 DRUPA (2000), 119, 120 Duality of Man, The (film), 17 Duncan, Andrew, 136 Duncan, John, 125, 152 Duncan, Robert, 334 Dundee, 84, 368 Dundee Advertiser, 214, 226 Dundee Courier, 360 Dunfermline Press, The, 233, 396 Dunn & Wilson, 139 Dunn, Douglas, 405 Durand, Jean, 21 Duras, Marguerite, 261, 262 dust-jackets, 63 Duval, K. D., 144 e-literature, 458–9 Eagle, 378 Easton, Jane, 153, 154 Ebel, Suzanne, 457, 458–63 Edinburgh, 2, 174, 368 bookshops in, 83–4 demise of printing houses in, 139 design and illustration, 151–3 employment of women compositors, 131–5 numbers employed in printing industry, 40 printing industry, xx, 5, 124–5, 131, 141, 194 publishers in, xx, 468 Edinburgh in the Age of Reason, 145 Edinburgh Anthology of Scottish Verse, 223 ‘Edinburgh’ bindings, 154 Edinburgh Book Fair, 62 Edinburgh Book Festival, 51 Edinburgh Central Library, 46 Edinburgh College of Art, 161 Edinburgh Compositors’ Friendly Society, 107 Edinburgh Film Guild, 22 Edinburgh Gazette, 344, 345

509

Edinburgh International Book Festival, 9, 387, 451, 452–4 Edinburgh International Exhibition (1886), 152 Edinburgh International Festival, 9, 452 Edinburgh International Film Festival, 25 Edinburgh Press, The, 139 Edinburgh Printmaker’s Workshop, 165 Edinburgh Review (magazine), 69, 183, 229, 269 Edinburgh Social Union, 149, 151, 152, 154 Edinburgh Typographia, 150 Edinburgh Typographical Society, 4–5, 134, 135 Edinburgh University Press, 57, 80, 145, 198, 296, 319–21, 350 Edinburgh University Student Publications Board (EUSPB) (later Polygon), 64, 321 Edinburgh Writers’ Circle, 403 Edinburgh Writers’ Conference, 262–3 editorial standards, 115 education, 2, 6, 45, 296, 315, 327, 328, 353 compensatory, 317 Curriculum Development movement, 316–17 introduction of National Curriculum, 327 link with libraries, 49–50 making compulsory, 311 and new Labour government, 328–9 persons in receipt of, 432 raise in standards, 315 raising of school leaving age, 315, 316 Education Act (1944), 316, 361 Education Acts (1870/72), 2, 45, 46, 138, 149, 193, 280, 296, 311, 312, 353–4, 431 Education (Scotland) Act (1918), 49, 315 Educational Publishers Council, 327 educational publishing, 6, 55, 111, 143, 192, 296, 311–19, 322–3, 327–9, 329, 353 challenges faced, 327, 328 and Gaelic, 287 impact of curriculum development, 317 impact of Education Acts, 311–12 overseas markets, 321–2 university market, 314 Egerton, George, 216 Eildon Tree, The (magazine), 269 electronic publishing, 70, 296, 327, 328, 351 Eliot, George, 191 Eliot, T. S., 401 Burnt Norton, 136 Ellis, Clifford and Rosemary, 336 Elsevier, 335, 464 emigration, 3, 4–5 Empire Exhibition (1934), 77, 78 employment printing industry, 5, 40 publishers, 5, 40, 468–9 women compositors in Edinburgh, 131–5 Encarta, 471, 472 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 129, 134, 149, 186, 193–4, 296, 298, 300, 301, 347, 470–2 online version, 471–2 encyclopaedia market, 351

510

edinburgh history of the book in scotland

Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, 303 engineering books, 333 Erskine, Ruaraidh, 233, 277, 284 esparto grass, 92, 96, 98 European Free Trade Association (EFTA) Treaty, 99 Evacuation Film Scheme, 24 evangelism, Scottish, 303 Evaristi, Marcella, 62 Eveling, Stanley, 62 Everett-Green, Evelyn, 359 Evergreen, The, 124–5, 152, 153, 216, 222 Everyman’s Library, 32 Expository Times, The, 303, 304 Faber & Faber, 135, 140, 142, 197, 237, 256 Faber, Michel, 199 The Crimson Petal and the Rose, 199 Fairbank, Alfred A Book of Scripts, 131 Fairley, Jan, 453 Falla, Jonathan, 69 Famedram, 166 family firms, 56 acquisition by multinationals, 8, 13, 31, 32–4, 55, 183, 197, 255, 295, 297, 322, 362–3, 425 Family Star, 371, 372 Farleigh, John, 131 Feltes, N. N., 185 Fenton, James, 61 Fenton, Tom, 61, 62 Ferguson, Alex A Light in the North, 65 Ferguson, John Alexander, 225 Ferguson, Ron, 306 Fergusson, James, 164, 213 Fergusson, John Duncan, 144 Fergusson, Robert, 236 Scots Poems, 140 Ferrier, Susan, 234 fiction, 466 and politics, 243–4 and Scottish Renaissance, 238–40 Fidler, Kathleen, 365 film see cinema Film Society of Glasgow, 22 Films of Scotland Committee, 22, 25, 29 Financial Times, 322, 348 Findlay, Bill, 258 Findlay, John, 151 Finkelstein, David, 1–12, 13–15, 31–40, 50–2, 88–90, 92–4, 182–4, 225, 233–6, 295–7, 303–5, 385–7, 431–54, 455–77 Finlay, Alec, 147 Finlay, Ian Hamilton, 94, 165, 177–80, 177 First World War, 7, 9, 21, 160, 194, 223, 313, 354–5 poetry and fiction relating to, 225–6 Fisher, James, 335 Flame, 369, 371, 374 Flash Gordon (film), 20–1 flat sheets, 59–60 Flatman Ltd, David, 90

Fleming, Linda, 439–41 Fleming, Tom, 21 Fletcher, Louise, 159 Floris Press, 274, 363, 365, 366 fly-leaf, 114 Folio Society, 115 Folk-Lore Journal, 216 folklore, 282, 362 Folklore Society, 216 Fontana Paperbacks, 324 Fontana typeface, 137 Ford, E. B., 337 Forster, E. M., 234 Forsyte Saga, The, 26 Fort William Free Press, 27 Forward, 17 Foulis family, 139 Foulis, Hugh (Neil Munro), 211 Foulis, T. N., 152, 154, 159, 229, 397 Fourdrinier machine, 92 Fowler, Norman, 374 Frankfurt Book Fair, 62, 474 Fraser, Alexander Neill, 107, 108 Fraser, Lady Antonia, 274 Fraser, Eugenie, 65 Fraser, Thomas, 213 Fraser, William, 107 Frazer, J. G. The Golden Bough, 194, 204, 300–1 Free Church of Scotland, 298, 300, 301, 309, 436 Free Man, 242, 244 Freedman, Barnett, 135, 136 French, Annie, 155 From Wool to Wearer (film), 17 Fuller, John, 61, 62 Flying to Nowhere, 62 Fullerton, Alexander, 55 Fulton, Robin, 268 Gaelic Books Council, 10, 184, 267, 277, 280, 288, 293, 362 Gaelic language, 46, 240, 277–8, 280–1, 293 Gaelic Language (Scotland) Bill, 280 Gaelic publishing, 184, 216, 277–94, 457 and educational market, 287 funding of, 10, 280, 287–8 list of publishers of Gaelic and bilingual productions, 291 and novels, 282–4 number of titles published, 286 and periodicals, 284 publications by sector, 292 recent developments, 293–4 and short stories, 284 title rates per publishing company, 289, 290 Gairm ( journal), 10, 257, 281, 285, 287, 406 Gairm Publications, 287, 288, 289 Galart, 97 Gall & Inglis, 340–1 Gall, James, 340–1 Gall jnr, James, 341 Galloway, Janice, 184, 259, 264 Galloway Mill, 97, 99

index Galt, John, 219, 234 Gardiner, Margaret, 62 Gardner, Alexander, 212, 286 Garioch, Robert, 257, 258, 267, 268 Garland, Nicholas, 62 Garnett, Edward, 398, 399 Garry, Flora, 258 Gaskell, Elizabeth, 164 Gath, 294 Gath Publications Ltd, 284 Gavin, Catherine Clyde Valley, 239–40 Geddes & Grosset, 464 Geddes, Anna, 151 Geddes, James Young, 213–14 Geddes, Patrick, 124, 151–3, 203, 216, 222, 223 Geikie, Sir Archibald, 331–2 Gem, 373 Geoffrey Bles Ltd, 362 geological publishing, 331, 342–3 geomorphology, 342–3 Germany, 180 Gibbon, Lewis Grassic, 240, 401 A Scots Quair, 243–4 Sunset Song, 243 Gibbons, Philip, 157–8 Gibbs, Andrew Dewar, 241 Gibson & Sons, Robert (later Hodder Gibson), 55, 143–4 Gifford, Dennis, 370 Gifford, Douglas, 273 Gilchrist, Jim, 259 Gill, Eric, 137 Gillanders, Robin, 177–8 Gillmor, Robert, 336 Gilmour, James, 335 Gilson, Captain Charles, 355 Ginn & Co Ltd, 136 Girl, 378 girls’ papers, 379 Gladstone, William, 358 Glaister, John, 346 Glasgow, 2, 3, 141, 174 BBC station at, 18 bookshops in, 84 cinemas in, 19 design and illustration, 154–5 Mitchell Library, 440 publishing in, 468 Glasgow City Improvement Trust, 174 Glasgow Co-operative Film Library, 22 Glasgow Evening News, 211 Glasgow fiction, 244 Glasgow Herald, 16, 25, 215, 233, 269–70, 396 Glasgow News, 27, 419 Glasgow Printmakers, 165 Glasgow School of Art, 155, 158 Glasgow University Press, 204 Glasgow Weekly Herald, 210, 389 Glasgow’s Women Library, 167 Glasser, Ralph, 387, 438, 439–41 Glen, Duncan, 94, 95–121, 122–47, 151, 183, 194, 256, 257, 271, 406, 408

511

The Akros Anthology of Scottish Poetry, 407 A Small Press and Hugh MacDiarmid, 146 globalisation, 8, 10, 456 Glowworm Books, 363 Godwin, Tony, 196 Golden Cockerell Press, 157 Goldie, David, 225, 226 Gollancz, Victor, 393, 415 Left Book Club, 423 Gordon, C. M., 211 Gordon, Giles, 269, 270, 387, 414–16 government publishing see official publishing Graham, David, 201 Graham, W. S., 406 Grampian Television, 26, 29 Grange of St Giles, The, 154 Grant & Son, Robert, 85, 86 Grant, Alan, 379, 381–2 Grant, Duncan, 130 Grant Educational Co., 143 Granta, 201 Graphic, 205, 210 Grasset, Bernard, 74 gravure technology, 382, 383 Gray, Alasdair, 202, 269 Lanark, 166, 199, 259, 274, 424 Gray, Alexander, 236 Gray, Cardinal Gordon Joseph, 306 Gray, Thomas Poems, 144 Green & Son Ltd, W., 33, 55, 326, 351 Green, Charles, 315 Green, George, 17 Green, William, 315 Greenfield, Professor Susan, 458 Greenock Telegraph, 16 Gregynog Press, 157 Greig, Gavin, 212 Gresson, R. A. R., 319 Grierson, John, 22, 25 Grierson, Professor H. J. C., 77, 234 Grieve, C. M. see MacDiarmid, Hugh Grigson, Geoffrey, 62 Grosset, Ron, 57 Grove Atlantic, 201 Guild of Women Binders, 154 Gulland, Elizabeth, 152 Gunn, Neil M., 39, 78, 230, 238, 241, 243, 244, 249, 387, 398–401, 425 The Atom of Delight, 399, 399 contributions to Scots Magazine, 242 The Grey Coast, 237, 398–9, 401 Hidden Doors, 237 Highland River, 244, 424 The Lost Glen, 400 Morning Tide, 396, 400, 423 Gutenberg, Johannes, 96 Guth na Bliadhna, 284 Guthrie, James, 140, 155 Hadow Report (1931), 316 Haldane, Elizabeth, 44, 245

512

edinburgh history of the book in scotland

Haldane, J. B. S., 48 Hale, Robert, 403, 404 half-profits system, 66, 385, 391, 410, 411 half-tone process, 170, 171 Hall, Andrew, 160 Hall, Donald, 269 Hamish MacBeth (television programme), 29 Handover, P. M. Printing in London, 131 Handsel Press, 309 Hannah, John, 29 Hansard, T. C. Typographia, 125 Harcourt Brace, 335 Hardie, George, 268 Hardy, Robina F., 152, 211 Hardy, Thomas, 130, 156 Harewood, George, 262 Harper & Row, 34 HarperCollins, 34, 60, 142, 323, 325, 340, 363, 464, 465, 466, 468 Harris, Paul, 275 Harry Potter, 30, 446, 447–50, 476 Hart-Davis, Rupert, 168 Harvey, Jake, 166 Harvie, Christopher, 49, 76, 401 Harvill Press, 362 Hassall, Joan, 94, 161–5, 162, 163 Hastings, James, 303, 304 Hawthorne, David, 21 Hay & Mitchell, 353 Hay, Helen, 152 Hay, J. MacDougall, 275 Gillespie, 224, 224, 275 Hayens, Herbert, 359 Haynes, Jim, 166 Headline, 404, 405 Heaney, Seamus, 269 Hearne, Sheila, 258 Hedderwick, Mairi, 166 Heidelberg Speedmaster, 104, 119 Heinemann, 204 Held, David et al, 32 Hell, Dr Rudolf, 116 Henderson & Bissett, 139 Henderson, Angus, 284 Henderson, Hamish, 10 Hendry, Frances Mary, 365 Hendry, George S., 302 Hendry, Joy, 166, 268 Henley, W. E., 216, 220, 227, 358 Henry, David, 6 Henryson, Robert, 140, 236 Henty, G. A., 297, 354, 356 Herald, The, 30, 63 Heritage Book Club (HBC), 156 Hermes, Gertrude, 157 Heron, Andrew, 306 higher education, 28, 314, 319, 327; see also universities Highland Society, 286 Highlands, 3, 173 library development, 45–6 Highlands and Islands Development Board, 9

Himes, Chester, 201 HMSO (Her Majesty’s Stationery Office) (later TSO), 127–8, 129, 297, 343, 344–5 Hobbs, Elizabeth, 167 Hodder & Stoughton, 217 Hodder Education, 144 Hodder Headline, 255, 273, 457 Hodge, William, 140 Hogarth Press, 237 Hogg, James, 425 Hole, William, 151 Holloway, Richard, 307 Hollywood, 19–21 Holmes MacDougall, 64, 144, 350 Holms, Joyce, 387, 403–5 Holtby, Winifred, 194 Holtzbrinck, Georg von, 363 Home Reading campaign, 477 Home Service Programme, 24 Hooper, Horace, 470 Horn, Caroline, 449 Hosking, Eric, 335–6 Hotspur, 368, 372, 374, 379 Houston, Graham, 307 HTV, 29 Hubbard, Tom, 51, 268 Hugh MacDiarmid, 144 Hugh MacDiarmid Memorial Sculpture, 166, 235 Hughes, Thomas, 359 Hugo, Victor, 74 Hunter & Foulis Ltd, 139 Hunter, Archibald M., 302 Hunter, Mollie, 362, 365, 366 Hunter, William, 139 Hutton, James, 330 Huxley, Sir Julian, 335 hypermediated works, 460–1 IBM, 119 Illustrated London News, 205 illustration see design and illustration immigration, 3–4 India, 6 Industrial Revolution, 2 InfoPrint Manager, 119 Inglis, James Gall, 341 Inglis, Robert, 341 International Bureau of Weights and Measures, 32 International Date Line, 32 International Labour Office, 32 International Standard Book Numbers (ISBN), 95 International Standard Serial Numbers (ISSN), 95 International Telegraph Union, 32 international trade organisations, 31, 32 International Typeface Corporation (ITC), 117 internet, 52, 82, 458 bookselling, 70, 82, 91, 447, 473–4, 476 and new media writing, 458–63 see also websites; world wide web Investigated Press Circulations, 371

index Ireland, 428 Irish Texts Society, 216 Jack, Edwin, 160 Jackie, 379 Jackson, Walter, 470 Jacob, Violet, 204, 225, 226, 236, 237 James, Henry, 1, 194 James Tait Black Memorial Prize, 62, 265, 424 Jamie, Kathleen, 259 Black Spiders, 61 Jardine, Penelope, 254 Jarvie, Gordon Time’s Traverse, 147 Jefferies, Richard, 158 Jeffrey, William, 233, 236 Jenkins, Robin, 306 Jennings, Gladys, 21 Jobs, Steve, 117, 118 Johnson, Maurice, 65 Johnston, Henry, 211 Johnston, W. & A. K., 340 Johnstone, Jean, 167 Johnston’s Handy Royal Atlas of Modern Geography, 340 Jones, George W., 128 Jones, Steve, 462 journalism, 392 Joyce, Michael Othermindedness, 458–9 Juridical Review ( journal), 315 Kahn, Bob, 116 Kailyard, 75, 154, 183, 216–17, 223, 394, 416–17 Kane, Jack, 48, 49, 249 Kane, Pat, 271, 273 Karow, Peter, 117 Kaye, Jeems, 211 Keates, Jonathan Allegro Positions, 62 Keating, Peter, 389 Kelman, James, 80, 184, 259, 264, 265, 408 How Late It Was, How Late, 264, 408 Kelmscott Chaucer, 124 Kelmscott Press, 124, 140, 154 Kelpie series, 199, 274, 363–6, 364 Kennaway, James, 252 Kennaway, Mary, 352, 362 Kennedy, A. L., 259, 265, 267, 408, 429–30 Kenney, Richard, 269 Kennington, Eric, 247 Kent-Thomas, R., 168 Kernan, Alvin The Death of Literature, 458 Kernohan, R. D., 309 Kerr, Euan, 375, 376, 382 Kerr, Roderick Watson, 140, 225, 236 Kettilonia, 267 Keynotes series, 215–16 Kilbride Public Library (Arran), 46 King & Co, Arthur (later Aberdeen University Press), 5 King, Jessie, 158–9

513

King, Lester, 342 Kingsley, Charles, 359 Kinleith Mill, 5–6, 97, 97, 99, 100 Kinloch, David, 268 Kipling, Rudyard, 130 Kling, Christoph, 461 Knight, G. A. F., 306 König, Friedrich, 96 Kravitz, Peter, 184 Kyle, Elizabeth, 239 Kynoch Press, 140 Kyrle Society, 149 Ladies’ Edinburgh Debating Society, 386, 387, 434–6 Ladies’ Edinburgh Educational Association, 435–6 Ladies Edinburgh Magazine, The, 433, 434 Lallans ( journal), 11, 184, 267, 268 Lamont, Rev. Donald, 284, 286 Lane, Allen, 130 Lane, John, 215 Lang, Andrew, 192, 206, 216, 220, 245, 258, 324, 352, 391 Lange, Jessica, 21 Lanston, Tolbert, 104–6, 107 Lardent, Victor, 120 Largs and Millport News, 30 Laski, Harold, 47 Law, David, 379, 380 Law, Jennifer, 62 law publishing see legal publishing Law Society of Scotland, 326 Lawrence, D. H., 425 Le Gallienne, Richard, 215 Leabhraichean Beaga, 287, 288–9 League of Dramatists, 421 Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS), 327 Leavis, Q. D. Fiction and the Reading Public, 393 Leckie & Leckie, 329 Lee, Joseph, 225, 226 legal publishing, 55, 305, 315, 326–7, 351 Lehmann, Rosamond, 194 Leighton, Robert, 354 Leng, John, 195, 369, 370 Leonard, Tom, 250, 264 Lessing, Doris, 200 letterpress printing, 101, 102, 104, 114, 118, 121, 122 Levi-Civita, Tullio, 332 Lewis, Jeremy Penguin Special, 130 Lewis, Wyndham, 229, 247 libraries, 2–3, 14, 41–53, 167, 196–7, 411, 431, 433, 445–6, 458 and authors, 411 and Carnegie, 2, 14, 41, 44–5 and children, 445–6 and Coats, 46–7 and decline of Gaelic, 46 development of in Highlands, 45–7 link with education, 49–50 local authority, 49–50

514

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libraries (cont.) opening up of by bookshops, 85 and penny rate, 41–2, 49 professionalisation of, 50 and Public Lending Right, 197, 402, 405, 425 public (rate-supported), 14, 42–4, 45 spread of, 392 subscription, 386, 388, 393, 395, 402 and universities, 50, 327 and women, 434 Lichtenstein, Roy, 171 Liddell, Faith, 453 Life and Work, 149, 152, 286, 295, 307–9 Limited Editions Club (LEC), 156 Lindsay, Maurice, 249 Lines Review, 11, 184, 257, 267–8, 406 Lingard, Joan, 365 Linklater, Eric, 39, 165, 242, 244, 246 The Cornerstones, 421 The Dark of Summer, 423 Linotron 202, 116 Linotype machine, 104, 106, 106, 107, 115, 117 Lister, Joseph, 330 literacy, 2, 138, 312 rise in, 3, 45, 315, 368, 411, 431, 432 literary agents, 35, 38, 387, 388, 390–1, 404, 412, 413–16, 426, 428 literary festivals see book festivals literary journals/periodicals, 1, 69, 183, 184, 226–8, 229–33, 267–9 Gaelic, 284 and poetry, 406–7 and politics, 241–2 SAC funding, 69–70, 267 and Scottish Renaissance, 230–3 see also individual names literary prizes, 264–6, 424 literary publishing 1880–1914, 203–22 1914–45, 223–49 1945–2000, 250–76 lithography, 92, 93, 101–2, 101, 102, 104, 136 offset, 93, 103, 104, 119 Little, Christopher, 449 Livingstone, David, 331 Livingstone, E. & S., 66, 197, 296, 334, 346; see also Churchill Livingstone Livingstone, W. P., 306, 309 Llosa, Mario Vargas, 453 Lloyd, Harold, 19 Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 210 Lobbenberg, Marion, 262 Local Government (Scotland) Act (1929), 315 local publishers, 211–13 Lochhead, Liz, 62, 184, 259, 264, 453 Lockerbie, Catherine, 454 Lockhart, William Ewart, 168 Lofts, W. O. G., 374 London printers in, 131 Scottish writers in, 408, 457 London Burns Club, 231

London publishers coverage of Scottish affairs, 240 opening of offices in Scotland, 273 Longman, Charles, 206, 207 Longman (later Longman Pearson), 33, 207, 208–9, 322, 334, 343, 348 Longman’s Magazine, 205–6, 208–9, 391 Lorimer, Robin, 146 Lorimer, W. L. New Testament in Scots, 274, 302 Low, R. D., 380 Luath Press, 147, 266, 351 Luesebrink, Marjorie, 461 Lumsden, Louisa, 436 Lutterworth Press, 158 Lyall, Francis, 306 Mac-Talla (newspaper), 282 McAleer, Joseph, 194, 195, 196, 368–84 Macarthur, Alexander and Long, H. K. No Mean City, 244 Macaulay, Rose, 194 MacCaig, Norman, 25, 51, 184, 250, 251–2, 257, 258, 267 McCallum, 29 McCance, William, 156, 157, 160 McCleery, Alistair, 1–12, 13–15, 56–7, 64–6, 67–70, 71–94, 97–100, 110–12, 141–3, 170–2, 182–4, 199–201, 226–8, 256, 295–7, 298–301, 307–9, 319–21, 348–50, 379–82, 385–7, 398–401, 426–9, 442–6, 455–77 The Porpoise Press, 140 MacColla, Fionn (Tom Macdonald) The Albannach, 244 MacCormick, John, 184, 284 Dùn-âluinn, 282–3 Gun d’thug i spéis do’n àrrmunn, 279 McDevitt, Bob, 273 MacDiarmid, Hugh (C. M. Grieve), 25, 39, 40, 51, 139, 156, 160, 183, 223, 228–33, 230, 240, 257, 267, 396, 425 Albyn or Scotland and the Future, 241 Annals of the Five Senses, 236, 398 and Blackwoods, 233–6 and Burns Clubs, 213 Contemporary Scottish Studies, 233, 237 Direadh I, II and III, 144–5 A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, 144, 232, 234, 235, 236 features in Akros, 257 funding of, 406 In Memoriam James Joyce, 144, 249, 401 The Islands of Scotland, 173, 241 The Kind of Poetry I Want, 144, 236 Lucky Poet, 249, 396 Northern Numbers, 160, 226, 229, 397–8 outlets for work, 396–7, 398 Pennywheep, 234, 235, 236 periodical publishing, 227 and political collections, 242 publishers of books, 401 Sangschaw, 234, 235, 236–7 and Scots language, 231

index and Scottish Chapbook, 229, 230–1, 277 and Scottish Nation, 231–2 and Scottish Renaissance, 396 and Second World War, 249 self publishing, 227, 397–8 and Voice of Scotland, 242 Macdonald, Annie, 154 Macdonald, Callum, 145–6, 267–8 MacDonald, George, 210, 212, 354, 391 Macdonald, Gus, 29 MacDonald, Ian, 277 MacDonald, Kate, 188–90 Macdonald Publishers, 287, 289 Macdougall, Norman, 309 McDougall’s Educational Co., 143, 144; see also Holmes McDougall MacFarlane, Malcolm, 286 Macfarquar, Colin, 470 MacGibbon, Jessie, 154 McGill, Patrick, 224 MacGillivray, Pittendrigh, 152 MacGoun, Hannah C. P., 152, 154, 159 Macgregor, Alisdair Alpin, 173 Macgregor, Mary, 153 McGregor, Robert, 154 McIlvanney, William, 175, 259 Macintosh, Frances, 155 Macintosh, Graeme, 333 Macintosh, Margaret, 155 MacIntyre, Alistair, 25 Mackay, Eneas, 286 Mackay, James William Wallace, 65 Mackay, Sheila, 165 MacKechnie, Donald, 284 Mackenzie, Agnes Mure, 161, 162, 164 Apprentice Majesty, 139 Mackenzie, Compton, 241, 242 Sinister Street, 395 Mackenzie, Fergus, 211 Mackenzie, Joseph, 175 Mackenzie, Peter, 64, 65 Mackersie, Jack, 379 Mackie, Alistair, 258, 268 Mackie, Charles, 152 Mackie, George, 145, 320 MacKinnon, Kenneth, 294 Mackintosh, Charles Rennie, 155, 314 MacKintosh, Hugh Ross, 302–3 MacLaren & Son, Alexander, 286, 288 Maclaren, Ian, 217, 219, 300, 392, 416 Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush, 217, 218, 417 Maclean, Alistair, 422–3 Maclean, Allan Campbell, 362 Maclean, Calum, 10 MacLean, Colin, 145 McLean, Duncan, 265 McLean, Ruari, 149, 151 Modern Book Design, 121 MacLean, Sorley, 258, 267, 402 Dàin do Eimhir, 249, 286 Maclehose & Sons, James, 204 MacLehose, Alex, 173

515

MacLehose, Robert, 107, 115, 135, 136, 141, 142, 204, 335 McLellan, Robert, 243 Maclellan, William, 144, 158, 161, 249, 401–2, 407 Macleod, Fiona see Sharp, William Macleod, George F., 307 Whole Earth Shall Cry Glory, The, 305–6 Macleod, James, 184 Cailin Sgiathanch, 284 MacLeod, Norman, 284 Macleod, R. D., 251, 275–6 McManus, Tony, 259 Macmillan, Chrystal, 436 Macmillan, Dorothy, 273 Macmillan, Duncan Scottish Art (1460–1990), 65, 66 Macmillan, Sir Frederick, 60, 85 Macmillan, Harold, 255 Macmillan Publishers, 204, 332, 362, 363 and children’s books, 359–60 educational publishing, 353 McNair, Herbert, 155 McNeill, Marian, 425 MacQueen, John, 145 Macrow, Brenda G., 173 Macy, George, 156 Maga, 418, 419 Magazine, The, 155 magazines, 195, 205, 368–74, 389, 411 and authors, 428 reading of, 452 serials, 411 women’s, 271–2, 369, 373–4, 378, 382–3 see also literary journals/periodicals Magnet, The, 373 Mainstream, 10, 15, 64–6, 146, 175, 184, 198, 202, 264, 465 Mair, Sarah Siddons, 434, 435–6 Making of a Great Daily Newspaper, The (film), 17 Malloch, George Reston, 243 Mannock, Jerry, 118 maps see cartographic publishing Marchant, Bessie, 297, 354, 355, 360 Mardersteig, Giovanni [Hans], 112, 144 margins, 109 Mariscat Press, 267 market research, 374 Markings (magazine), 269 Marks, Howard, 201 Marryat, Captain, 354 Marsack, Robyn, 52 Màrtainn Mac an t-Saoir Ath-aithne, 293 Martel, Yann Life of Pi, 199, 265, 465 Martin, David, 321 Martin, Eric, 358 Marvel, 381 Marzaroli, Oscar, 175 Massie, Allan, 271 Master of Ballantrae, The (television programme), 26

516

edinburgh history of the book in scotland

Master Printers Association, 4 mathematical publishing, 332, 333, 342, 349 Mathews & Lane, 215 Mathews, Elkin, 215 Mattos, Katherine de, 221 Maule, Graham, 305 Maxwell, Glyn, 269 Maxwell, James Clerk, 330 Maxwell Macmillan Publishing Corporation, 145 Maxwell, Robert, 142, 145, 197, 320, 321, 326 Maxwell, William, 125, 129, 130 M’Bain, J. M., 213 Meade, L. T., 356 media, new see new media medical publishing, 296–7, 334–5 Meek, James, 37 Meldrum, David Storrar, 191, 219, 418 Mellanby, Sir Kenneth, 337 Menzies, John, 15, 64, 85, 86, 88–90, 88, 431, 457 Mercat Press, 147, 202, 266–7 Meredith, George, 210, 358 Mergenthaler, Ottmar, 104 mergers 5, 31–4, 144, 197–8, 255, 261, 297, 322, 348, 362–3, 456, 457; see also conglomerates Meynell, Alice, 221 Meynell, Sir Francis, 128, 135, 140 Michael, M. A., 140 Mickey Mouse Weekly, 377 Millar, Mark, 381 Miller & Richard, 125, 126, 127, 129 Miller, Henry, 263 Miller, Hugh, 331 Miller, Moira, 365 Miller Parker, Agnes, 94, 155–8, 156, 160–1 Miller, William, 125 Mills & Boon, 194, 403, 404 Milne & Son, James, 5 Milne, A. A., 352 Milne, Louise, 261–3 ministerial autobiographies/biographies, 306 Ministry of Information (MOI), 24 Minnie the Minx, 380 Mirror Group Newspapers, 29 Missionary Record, 307 Mitchell, John, 225 Mitchison, Naomi, 39, 157, 161, 241, 242, 245–8, 245, 252, 365 The Bull Calves, 249 The Moral Basis of Politics, 248 The Powers of Light, 247 We Have Been Warned, 247 Mix, Tom, 19 Moberg, Gunnie, 177 Modern Gaelic Bards, 283 Modern Scot, The, 183, 228, 241, 396, 398 Moffat, Alistair, 29 Moffat, James, 302 Moir, Judy, 201 Monarch of the Glen (television programme), 29 Monotype Bembo typeface, 128

Monotype Caslon typeface, 129, 130 Monotype Corporation, 116, 120, 129, 130 Monotype Fournier typeface, 130 Monotype Lasercomp, 116 Monotype machine, 105–6, 105, 106–7, 108–9, 115, 116, 128, 128, 129, 130, 132–3, 134 Montgomery Litho Group, 139 Montrose Review, 231 Moody and Sankey Sacred Songs and Solos, 301 Moon, Lorna, 239 Dark Star, 239 Moonie, George, 373, 377, 378, 380 Moore, Alan, 381 ‘moral books’, 93 Moran, James Stanley Morrison, 129 Morgan, Edwin, 184, 213, 250, 251, 257–8, 259, 267, 268, 269, 402, 405, 406, 407, 453 Gnomes, 257 The Second Life, 145 Morison, Stanley, 116, 120, 129, 130, 164 First Principles of Typography, 147 A Tally of Types, 126 Morning Star Publications, 147 Morris, Talwin, 159 Morris, William, 123–4, 130, 153 Morrison & Gibb, 59, 112, 125, 129, 139, 141, 255, 344 Morrison, Grant, 381 Morrison, Nancy Brysson The Gowk Storm, 239 Mortimer, John, 452 Morton, George, 214 Morvern Callar (film), 30 Mosley, James, 126 Motion, Andrew, 61 Moubray Press, 165 Mudie’s Circulating Library, 85, 241 Muir, Edwin, 39, 77, 228, 232, 237, 240, 242, 243, 244, 249, 257, 275 Scott and Scotland, 240, 241 Scottish Journey, 241 Muir, Kenneth, 157 Muir, Willa, 39, 240–1, 425 Imagined Corners, 239, 275 Mrs Ritchie, 239 Muirhead, R. E., 231 multinationals see conglomerates Munro, Neil, 160, 211, 225, 392, 417, 418–19 Munro, Rona, 62 Munro, Shona, 453 Murdoch, Rupert, 144, 197, 255, 325, 455 Murray, Bill, 65 Murray, Charles, 214, 225, 237 Hamewith, 223 Murray, David Christie, 216 Murray, Glen, 258 Murray, John, 204, 255, 331, 349 My Weekly, 368, 371, 372, 383 Naismith, William, 212 Nash, Andrew, 182, 185–202, 203–22, 224, 298, 387, 394–5

index National Book League, 195, 327, 452 National Cultural Strategy for Scotland (2000), 475 National Gaelic Resource Centre, 293 National Library of Scotland, 47, 148 Bookbinding Competition, 115 National Lottery grants, 68–9 National Museums of Scotland, 351 National Observer (was Scots Observer), 222 National Trust for Scotland, 473 nationalism, Scottish, 27, 161 natural history books, 331 Navy Mission Society, 436–7 NBA see Net Book Agreement Neeson, Liam, 21 Neil, William, 302 Neil Wilson Publications, 68–9, 267, 351 Neill & Co, 107–8, 125 Neish, J. S., 213 Nelson, Andrew, 388–408 Nelson Encyclopaedia, 350 Nelson, Ian, 73, 111, 190 Nelson II, Thomas, 313 Nelson III, Thomas, 111, 138, 188, 190, 313 Nelson Library, 71, 110 Nelson, Ronnie, 111 Nelson School Classics, 111 Nelson Thornes, 33, 255, 322, 363 Nelsons, 3, 8, 34, 93, 94, 110–12, 125, 134, 143, 234, 322, 363, 386 acquisition of by Thomson, 32, 75, 111, 139, 197, 255, 322, 363 and Buchan, 73, 75, 110, 188–90, 313, 315–16, 420 and children’s books, 359, 361 decline, 110–11 design and illustration, 160 and educational publishing, 55, 111, 312–13, 315–16, 322, 338, 353 and First World War, 189, 313 French Collection, 15, 72, 73–5 ‘moral books’, 93 overseas markets and offices, 6, 64, 67, 111, 313, 322 partnership with Bartholomew, 338–9 printing works, 58, 93, 110, 112, 138, 160, 313 production of cheap editions and ‘libraries’, 71, 73, 110, 160, 182, 186, 188 reference works, 350 relinquishing of bible publishing, 296 reprints of copyright novels, 186, 188 selling of printing division, 255 Nelson’s Children’s Annual, 361 Nelsons Classics, 71, 110 Nelson’s Portfolio of War Pictures, 189–90 Nelson’s Royal Readers, 160, 353, 365 Net Book Agreement (NBA), 60, 85–6, 182, 185–6, 412, 476 collapse of (1995), 60, 90, 186 New Age, The, 188, 232 New Century Library, 71, 110 New Edinburgh Review, 321 New Hotspur, 379

517

New Journalism, 392 new media, 11, 13, 457, 458–63 and authors, 421–4 new media writing, 458–63 New Naturalist series, 335–7 New Pica Roman No.2, 126–7 New Review, 396 New Statistical Account, 386 New Testament, 302–3 New Writing Scotland (anthology), 267, 269 New Zealand, 6 emigration to, 3, 4 Newbery, Fra, 155 Newbolt, Sir Henry, 111, 190, 315–16 Newman, Sydney, 319 Newnes-Pearson, 372 News Corporation, 34, 456–7, 464 News International, 55, 197–8, 255, 305, 325, 340, 363 Newsom Report, 317 newspapers, 13, 18, 25, 30, 183, 205, 232, 369, 389, 411 pre-1920, 16 in 1920s, 18 in 1970s, 27 design and illustration, 160 emergence of radical and alternative press, 27 reading of, 452 serial fiction in, 209–10 Newton, Nigel, 449 NexPress, 119 Nicoll, William Robertson, 76, 183, 217, 219, 298, 300, 394, 395, 416 Nicolson, Max, 337 Nimmo, W. P., 331, 353, 355–6 Nisbet & Company, James, 386 Niven, Frederick, 192 non-fiction, 466 Nonesuch Press, 130, 135, 140, 156 Normand, Tom, 94, 148, 168–81 Norrie, Ian, 191 North British Daily Mail, 16 Northern Review, 227, 232 Northwords (magazine), 69 Northwords Now (magazine), 269 novels 6s, 186, 188 decline of three-volume, 182, 186, 188, 388, 391, 392, 441 Gaelic, 282–4 Nowell-Smith, Simon, 186 Noyes, Alfred, 234 Nuffield Foundation, 349 Nuffield Maths Project, 349 Nutt, Alfred Trubner, 216 Nutt, David, 216 Obelisk Press, 249 official publishing, 127–8, 343–5; see also HMSO offset lithography, 93, 103, 104, 119 Ogilvie, William, 236 Ohmann, Richard, 32

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Old Statistical Account, 386 Old Style typeface, 127, 128 Olding, Elisabeth, 164 Oliphant & Co. (later Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier), 38, 154, 205, 211, 394 Oliphant, Margaret, 204, 295, 409–10 Oliver & Boyd, 58, 67, 73, 94, 138, 161, 164, 197, 297, 322–3, 327, 348 compositors employed by, 125 educational publishing, 51, 348 and government publications, 344 medical publishing, 335 reference publishing, 348 scientific publishing, 341–3 selling of to Financial Times, 33, 343, 348 Oliver, John, 162, 164 One Hundred Modern Scottish Poets, 213 online bookselling see internet Oor Wullie, 375, 376–7 Oprey, Jessie, 356 Optical Character Recognition (OCR), 118 Orage, A. R., 232 Ordinance Survey, 339 Ordinance Survey Maps of Scotland, 338 Original Prints (anthology), 269 Orkney Press, 184, 251 ornithology, 342 Osbourne, Lloyd, 190 Otago Papers Mills (Dunedin, New Zealand), 5 Ottakars, 90, 472 Outlook, 228, 241 overseas markets, 6, 15, 64, 71–82, 111, 185, 191, 196, 321–2, 473–4 Oxenham, Elsie, 359, 361 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 472 Oxford University Press (OUP), 58, 156, 214 Oxley Printing Group, 139 Pae, David, 210 PageMaker, 118 Paisley, 212 Palin, Michael, 63 Pall Mall Christmas Extra, 206 Palliser, Charles, 199 Palmer McCulloch, Margery, 183, 223–49 Pan, 196 Paolozzi, Eduardo, 165, 258 paper, 58, 100, 114 mechanical manufacture of, 96 price of, 96 rationing of, 196 sizes, 112–13 used for photographs, 102–3 paperbacks, 86, 87, 112, 182, 196, 402, 423–4, 441 papermaking industry, 92, 97–100 papermills, 94, 97–100 decline of, 99–100 during Second World War, 97–9 Para Handy (television programme), 25 Parker, Geoffrey, 258 Parliament House Book, 351 Parrott, Sir Edward, 189 Paterson, Aileen, 363

Paterson, A. J. B., 401 Paterson, Andrew, 17 Paterson, Don, 269 Paterson, Lennox, 164 Paterson, Maurice, 383, 384 Paterson, William, 214 Patterson, Annie, 166 Payback Press, 201 Peacock Press, 165 Pearson, 197, 334, 335, 343, 348, 457 Pearson Longman, 349 Pearson’s Weekly, 205 Pedersen, Sarah, 311–45, 346–51 PEN see Scottish PEN Penguin Books, 58, 59, 82, 86, 112, 130, 131, 182, 196, 273, 324 Penrice, Leonard, 146 People’s Friend, 210, 215, 297, 368, 369, 371, 372, 378, 382, 383, 394, 395, 403, 416 People’s Journal, 226, 369, 394, 416 performance, 460–1 Pergamon Press, 142, 198, 320, 326 periodicals see literary journals/periodicals Perrie, Walter, 268 Peterhead Sentinel, 212 Phemister, Alexander C., 129 photobooks, 175–6, 180, 181 photographers, collaboration with writers, 176–8 photography, 94, 102–3, 151, 168–81, 336 as art, 175–6 as a documentary form, 170, 174–5 landscape, 172–4, 176 reproduction technology, 170–2 survey of Scotland’s major cities, 174 photojournalism, 175 photolithography, 102, 139 Photoshop, 104 phototypesetting, 103–4, 115–16, 119 pica, 126–7 Pictish Review, The, 233 Picture Post, 378 Pilkington Report (1962), 26 Pillans & Wilson (now Pillans & Waddies), 33, 59, 125 Pinker, James Brand, 38 plays, 237–8, 243 Plowden Report, 317 pocketbooks series, 147 Poems Addressed to Hugh MacDiarmid, 146 Poems of Robert Burns, The, 165 poetry, 14, 144, 223 hyper-mediated, 460–1 and political themes, 242–3 publications supporting, 406–7 publishing of by Salamander Press, 61 publishing of vernacular, 213–15, 223 and Scottish Poetry Library, 14, 50–2, 53, 167, 267, 406 and Scottish Renaissance, 236–7 and war-time publishing, 225–6 Poetry Scotland series, 144, 249, 407 poets, 405–8, 428 and universities, 405–6

index Polestar Group, 142 politics and literature in 1930s, 240–8 Polygon Press, 10, 64, 67, 80, 81, 147, 184, 198, 202, 261, 264, 321, 429, 465–6 Poolewe Public Hall, 45 Porpoise Press, 136, 140, 160, 183, 197, 236–7, 244, 256, 400–1 PostScript, 118 Potter, Jane, 11, 183, 250–76, 301, 352–67, 470–2 Potter, Pat, 461 Poulet, Georges, 319 Power, Rhoda, 157 Power, William, 39, 227, 233, 240 Preachers Lectureship, 305 Presbyterian Review, The (periodical), 304 Presbyterianism, 278 press see newspapers Presses de la Citè, 349, 350 printer’s mark, 124 printing industry/printers, 96, 124–5, 141–3 closures of publishers’ own works, 58–9, 138 decline in standards of, 122 in Edinburgh, xx, 5, 124–5, 131, 141, 194 employment in, 5, 40 expansion, 141 export of machinery, 5 and mergers, 141, 142, 143 replacement of letterpress with lithography, 92–3, 101–4 revival of good book, 123–4 and typefaces see typefaces prizes, literary, 264–6, 424 professionalisation of authors, 388, 390, 411–13 and libraries, 50 of publishing, 13–14, 31–40, 56 proofing press, 113 proofreading, 115 property characters, 67 prose-reading books, 282 Psalms of David, 153 Public Lending Right, 197, 402, 405, 425 Public Libraries Acts, 431 Public Libraries (Scotland) Act (1853), 41, 43 publishers/publishing as a ‘cultural industry’, 475 decline of medium-sized, 464 economics of, 54–70 employment in, 5, 40, 468–9 factors in promoting success of Scottish, 55 growth rates, 467 move to the south, 309, 322 number of Scottish, 457 and other media, 195–6 ownership of own printing plants and closure of, 58–9, 138 professionalisation of, 13–14, 31–40, 56 regional dispersal of, 468 SAC grants to, 11, 67–9, 68, 259, 261, 266, 267, 363

519

sales turnover, 465 sources of finance, 467 studies on trends in, 464–70 subsidiary sources of revenue, 67 Publishers Association, 31, 34, 60, 83, 185, 195 Punch, 209 QuarkXPress, 104, 118 Quite Ugly One Morning (television programme), 29 Quiz (periodical), 211 Radcliffe, Daniel, 450 radio, 13, 18–19, 22–4, 26, 30, 161 in 1920s/30s, 18–19 in 1960s/70s, 27–8 in 1980s, 28 arrival of pirate stations, 27 and authors, 402–3, 421–2, 428 postwar, 22–4 Radio Caroline, 27 Radio Clyde, 27, 30 Radio Forth, 27 Radio Highland, 28 Radio London, 27 Radio nan Eilean, 28 Radio nan Gaidheal, 281 Radio Scotland, 27, 28 Radio Writers’ Association, 421 Rae, Thomas, 146 railway bookstalls, 85, 88, 89, 431 Raine, Craig, 61 Ramsay, E. B., 213 Random House Group, 66, 81, 202, 465 Rankin, Ian, 29, 65, 259, 264, 429 A Question of Blood, 425 Ransford, Tessa, 51, 52, 259 Reader’s Digest Association, 304, 339 Reader’s Digest Great World Atlas, 339 Reader’s Union, 195 readers/reading, 386, 387, 431–54, 476–7 attempt to increase numbers of, 477 and book clubs, 447 children’s, 387, 442–6, 449 decline in number of, 476 international comparisons of, 441–2 missions and reading rooms, 437 and new media writing, 459, 460, 462–3 profile of, 476 surveys on, 451–2 and women, 433–4 reading rooms, 2, 434, 436–7 Readiscovery Book Bus, 446 Rebel Inc., 201 Record, 309 Red Letter, 369, 371–2, 374, 377 Red Paper on Scotland, 321 Red Star Weekly, 371, 372 Reed Elsevier, 330 reference publishing, 297, 346–51 regionalisation, 9–10 Reid, J. M., 162 Reith, John, 19

520

edinburgh history of the book in scotland

religious publishing, 295, 298–310 and Bible, 192, 193–4, 266, 302–3, 304, 310, 323 influence of Robertson Smith, 298, 300–1 ministerial autobiographies/biographies, 306 periodicals, 307–9 and sermons, 305 and T. & T. Clark, 303–5 Reprint Society, 423 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), 328 Restrictive Trade Practices Act, 186 Retail Price Maintenance, 476 reward books, 353, 354, 356, 361 Reynolds, Siân, 15, 71, 73–5, 94, 133–5, 148 Britannica’s Typesetters, 125, 132 Richard and Judy Book Club, 476 Richards, Lucy, 147 right of return for full credit, 60–1 Rob Roy (Scott), 13, 21–2, 23 film and television versions, 18, 21–2 Rob Roy statue, 20 Robbe-Grillet, Alain, 261, 262 Robbins Report, 50 Roberts, William, 157 Robertson, Angus An t-ogha mór, 283–4 Robertson, James Logie, 214 Robertson, Murray, 167 Robertson, Robin, 408 Robertson Smith, William, 193–4, 295–6, 298, 300–1, 302, 308, 470 Rodgers, Derek, 270–1 Ròsarnach, An, 284 Rose, Dilys, 259 Rose, Jonathan, 439 Rosebery, Lord, 188 Ross, Andrew C., 306 Ross, Father Anthony, 258 Ross, Raymond, 166, 258 Ross, Willie, 9 Routledge, 401 Rover, 372, 373, 377 Rowat, Jessie, 155 Rowling, J. K., 363, 447, 448, 449 Royal Commission for Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, 344 Royal Literary Fund, 406, 424–5 royal octavo, 112 Royal Society of Edinburgh, 314 royalty payments, 66, 386, 388, 391, 404, 410, 412, 420 Royle, Trevor In Flanders Fields, 225–6 Ruskin, John, 149 Rutherford, D. E., 319 Rutherford House, 309 Ryan, Marie-Laure Cyberspace Textuality, 459 SAC (Scottish Arts Council), 10, 15, 40, 51, 406, 449, 452, 475 book awards, 61, 84, 266, 424 and Canongate Classics, 274–5

and children’s reading initiatives, 446 criticism of, 66, 269–71 funding of authors, 25, 271, 363, 406 funding of literary magazines, 69–70, 267, 269 funding of publishers, 11, 67–9, 68, 259, 261, 266, 267, 363 role, 67–70 study of children’s reading habits (1989), 442, 444–5 study on reading, 451 survey on authorship (2001), 426–9 translation funds, 70 Saint Andrew Press, 206, 306, 309 St Margaret’s School (Edinburgh), 176 Salamander Press, 15, 61–3, 166, 179 Salen Public Library (Mull), 46 Salmond, J. B., 225, 242 Saltire Chapbooks, 161, 162, 164 Saltire Society, 26, 161, 162 Scottish Book of the Year Awards, 265–6, 293, 424 Sandeman, Margot, 179 Sandow’s Magazine, 391 Sanford, Christy Sheffield, 461 sans serif typeface, 109 Saroléa, Charles, 73, 74, 152 Sarraute, Natalie, 262 Sassoon, Siegfried Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, 135–6 Saturday Evening Post, 16 Savage, William Practical Hints on Decorative Printing, 125 school publishing see educational publishing School of Scottish Studies (Edinburgh University), 250 scientific publishing, 296, 319, 331–3 New Naturalist series, 335–7 and Oliver & Boyd, 341–3 scientific, technical and medical publishing (STM), 330–45 Scoop, 382 Scotch Roman typeface, 127 ‘Scotch’ typefaces, 125–6 Scotch and Wry, 28 Scotland in Quest of her Youth, 241 Scotland Today, 28 Scots Art, 227 Scots Independent, 233 Scots language, 231, 236, 243, 250, 268, 362 Scots Language Resource Centre, 267 Scots Language Society, 268 Scots Law Times, 315 Scots Magazine, The, 173, 183, 226–7, 228, 242, 371 Scots Observer, 214, 220–2, 227, 233 Scots Pictorial, 149 Scotsman, The, 10, 16–17, 25, 30, 63, 205, 214 Scott & Fergusson, 141 Scott, Alexander, 267, 405 Scott, David, 94, 212–13 Scott Monument (Edinburgh), 385 Scott, Sir Walter, 17, 25, 50, 123, 172, 385 celebrity status, 385

index The Lady of the Lake, 173 The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, 93 Rob Roy, 21–2 Scott-Moncrieff, George, 162, 164, 174 Scottish Academic Press, 289, 321, 343 Scottish Art Journal, 149 Scottish Arts Council see SAC Scottish Book Collector (magazine) (later Textualities), 11, 69, 166–7 Scottish Book Marketing Group, 35, 87 Scottish Book Source, 35 Scottish Book Trust, 267, 363, 366, 446 Scottish Books Online, 474 Scottish Booksellers Association, 31 Scottish Chapbook, The, 227, 229, 230–1, 233, 398 Scottish Children’s Press, 363 Scottish Daily Express, The, 27 Scottish Daily News, 17 Scottish Educational Cinema Society, 22 Scottish Educational Film Association, 24 Scottish Educational Journal, 227, 233, 396 Scottish Enlightenment, 121 Scottish Executive, 475, 476, 477 Scottish Executive Education Department (SEED), 327 Scottish Film Council (SFC), 22, 24 Scottish Film Productions, 19 Scottish Gaelic Texts Society, 286, 287, 289 Scottish Home Service, 403 Scottish International, 258 Scottish Journal of Theology, 307 Scottish Mathematics Group, 349 Scottish Media Group, 29 Scottish Moving Picture News, 17 Scottish Nation, 227, 231–2 Scottish National Heritage, 468 Scottish National Party, 26 Scottish National Players, 238 Scottish National Theatre, 238 Scottish nationalism, 247–8, 256, 265, 344 Scottish Navy Mission, 437–8 Scottish Notes and Queries (magazine), 231 Scottish Pamphlet Poetry (website), 269 Scottish PEN, 14, 38–40, 161 committees, 40 International Congresses, 39–40, 76–7 Scottish Poetry Library, 14, 50–2, 53, 167, 267, 406 Scottish Publishers Association, 14, 34–5, 36, 40, 62, 82, 87, 267, 363, 457, 474–5 Scottish Record Office, 351 Scottish Renaissance, 76, 183, 203, 213, 216, 223, 227, 228–40, 231, 232–3, 249, 273, 286, 396 Scottish Review, 189, 212 Scottish School Book Association, 323 Scottish Standard, 228 Scottish Storytelling Centre, 267 Scottish Television Enterprise, 29 Scottish Television Ltd (STV), 25, 27, 28, 29 Scottish Typographical Association, 7 Scottish Universal Investments (SUITS), 144 Scottish Universities Law Institute, 326

521

Scottish Women’s New Writing (anthology), 269 Screenwriters’ Association, 421 Scribner’s, 207, 208, 303, 390 Searle, Ronald, 380 Secker & Warburg, 408 Second World War, 7, 9, 31, 77, 97, 137, 196, 248–9, 316, 355, 361, 378 Secretary for Scotland Act (1885), 343 Secrets, 369, 371, 372 Sefton, Henry R., 295, 298–310 Seirbheis nam Meadhanan Gàidhlig, 281 Selwyn, Mary, 61, 62 Senefelder, Alois, 92, 101–2, 104, 151 serial fiction, 204–5, 209–10, 388, 389 ‘serials crisis’, 327, 328 Serusier, Paul, 152–3 Seth, Vikram, 415 Sevenpennies, 73, 186, 188, 190 Sgeulaiche, An, 283, 284 Shakespeare, William, 158 Shannon, Faith, 167 ‘share profit’ agreements, 66 Sharp, Alan, 21–2 Sharp, Elizabeth, 153 Sharp, William, 152, 215–16 Shaw, George Bernard, 130, 191 The Adventures of the Black Girl in her Search for God, 131 Shelley, Mary, 253 Shepherd, Nan, 275 The Quarry Wood, 238–9 Shilling Library, 71, 110 Shirley, Edward, 361 Shure, Robert, 274 signature marks, 114 Simon, Herbert, 140 Simon, Oliver Introduction to Typography, 109–10 Simpson, Joseph, 159, 160 Simson, Frances, 436 Sinclair, Archibald, 286 Sinclair, Marion, 80, 288 Sinclair, Martin, 184 Singing Fool, The (film), 19 Sissons, J. B., 342 Sixpenny Classics, 71, 110, 186, 188 Sixpenny Waverley series, 138 Skelton, Robin, 406 Skipper, 372 Slessor, Mary, 306 small publishers, 76, 104, 145–6, 266–7, 350–1, 363, 396, 408, 457, 464, 466 Smellie, William, 470 Smith & Son, John, 83, 88, 90, 447, 473 Smith, Alexander McCall, 184, 200, 264, 273, 424, 429 The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, 15, 67, 79, 80–1, 430 Smith, George Adam, 302 Smith, Iain Crichton, 50, 250, 251, 257, 267, 269, 403, 415 Murchadh, 287 Smith, Janet Adam, 168

522

edinburgh history of the book in scotland

Smith, Janet Stewart, 154 Smith, Sydney Goodsir, 257, 267, 268, 402 Smith, W. H., 64, 90, 431, 457, 472 Smythies, E. A., 342 social realists, 154 Society of Authors, 31, 185, 186, 390, 421, 425 Critical Times for Authors, 402 Society of Freelance Editors and Proofreaders, 468–9 Somerville, William, 55 Sound Broadcasting Act (1972), 27 Soutar, Elizabeth, 167 Soutar, William, 230, 242, 243, 402 Southside, 146 Soviet Union, 180 Spark, Muriel, 246, 251, 252–5 The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, 254 Spectator, 240 ‘speering’, 374 Spence, Alan, 62 Spence, Lewis, 214, 233, 236 Spencer, Martin, 321 Squires, Claire, 264–6 Stair Memorial Encyclopaedia, 326 Stakis Scottish Writer of the Year, 266 Stanford, Derek, 253–4 Stanhope, Earl (3rd), 96 Stanton, Blair Hughes, 157 Stationery Office, The (TSO) (was HMSO), 343, 345 Steele, Hunter, 269, 270 Stevenson, Andrew, 334 Stevenson, Fanny, 356 Stevenson, Flora, 151, 436 Stevenson, Iain, 13, 14–15, 54–70, 323–5, 330–45 Stevenson, J. W. God in MyUnbelief, 306 Stevenson, Louisa, 436 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 17, 64, 95, 130, 190, 191, 217, 275, 352, 389–90, 392 ‘The Beach of Falesa’, 205 Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, 22, 205–9, 390 Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes, 168, 169, 174 Kidnapped, 477 New Arabian Nights, 389–90 stories published in magazines, 206 Treasure Island, 356–9, 357, 390 Stewart, James S., 305 Stokes, Telfer, 167 Stopes, Marie Carmichael, 436 Stòrlann Nàiseanta na Gàidhlig (National Gaelic Resource Centre), 293 Stornoway Gazette, 10 Storrar, William, 306–7 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 93–4 Strand, Paul Tir a’Mhurain, 176 Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The (film), 17 Strasser, Reiner, 461 Strathesk, John, 211 Studies in Scottish Literature, 96

Success, 219 Sun, The (magazine), 212 Sunday Post, 369, 375, 377 supermarkets, 90, 91, 476 surrealism, 160 Survey of the Gaelic Dialects of Scotland, 278, 280 Swan, Annie S., 211, 212, 387, 393, 393, 394–5 Swan, Maggie, 152 Sweet & Maxwell, 33, 326 Swift, 378 Swinnerton, Frank, 391 symbolism, 151 Symington, Johnson Topographical Anatomy of the Child, 334 Taggart, 29 Take the High Road (television programme), 28 Talbot, John, 153, 175 The Pencil of Nature, 170 Sun Pictures in Scotland, 172–3 Taylor, A. E., 159 Taylor, Alan, 269, 270 Taylor, Winifred, 355 television, 24, 28, 476 in 1960s, 26 in 1980s/90s, 28–9 and authors, 402, 421, 422 challenging of priority of print, 13, 458 domestic drama production, 29 impact on comics, 378, 382 introduction of commercial, 25 mergers and emergence of conglomerates, 28–9 post-war, 25 Temple Bar, 204–5 Templeton, Elizabeth, 306 Textualities (magazine), 69, 269 theological works, 295–6 Theology in Scotland, 307 Thin, Ainslie, 164, 452 Thin, James, 84, 88, 90, 161, 164, 202, 266, 447, 473 Thomas, Julian, 115 Thompson, J. Arthur, 331 Thomson, David Couper, 160, 369 Thomson, D. C., 17, 27, 57, 173, 194–5, 226, 297, 464 acquisition of John Leng, 195, 369 ban on trade unions, 195 and boys’ papers, 195, 374, 377, 379, 382 and children’s books, 360 and comics, 374–8, 380, 382 decline in popularity of publications, 378–9 and girls’ papers, 379 magazine and comic publishing, 268, 369–84 property characters, 67 success of, 384 and women’s magazines/papers, 378, 382–3 Thomson, Derick, 267, 277, 286–7, 288 Thomson, Frederick, 369

index Thomson, George Malcolm, 140, 236, 241, 400 Thomson, Harold, 383 Thomson II, William, 369 Thomson, John, 170, 174–5 Street Life in London, 174–5 Thomson Organisation, 32, 75, 111, 139, 255, 322, 326, 333, 355 Thomson, Roy, 25, 197 Thornes, Stanley, 33, 255 Thorp, Joseph, 127–8 three-volume novel, 411 decline in, 292, 388, 391, 441 Thyne, William, 139 Tillotson’s Fiction Bureau, 210 Times Atlas, 339 Times Books, 340 Times Law Reports, 305 Times Literary Supplement, 146 Times New Roman typeface, 120 Times, The, 120, 194 Book War, 185–6 Tit Bits, 205, 219 Today Show Book Club, 81 Tongue Subscription Library (Sutherland), 46 topographical books, 172–4 Topper, 380 Torrance, Thomas F., 303 Torrington, Jeff, 265 Townsend, Sue The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, 415 TPPB (typesetting, print, paper and binding), 57–8 T.P.’s Weekly, 205 trade unions, 7, 32, 195 Trainspotting (film), 30 translation, rights to, 67 Traquair, Phoebe (née Moss), 151, 153–4 travel industry, and photography, 169–70 ‘travellers’, 63 Traverse Plays, The (TTP), 61–2 Traverse Theatre, 166 Tregara Press, 165 Trigger Press, 167 Trip to the Moon, A (film), 17 Trocchi, Alexander, 261, 263 TrueType format, 118 Tshichold, Jan, 131 TSO see Stationery Office, The Tucker, Charlotte Maria, 359 Tuckwell, John, 147 Tuckwell Press, 198, 202, 264 Tuke, J. Batty, 335 Turnbull & Spears, 125 Turnbull, Archie, 56–7, 145, 320 Turnbull, Gael, 267 Turnbull, T. R. B., 306 Tutti Frutti (television programme), 29 Twain, Mark, 334 2000AD, 381 Tynan, Katharine, 324 Tynan, Kenneth, 263 typefaces, 100–1, 106, 109, 117, 120, 122, 125–7 Caslon Old Face, 127, 128, 129, 130

523

computerised, 120 Fontana, 137 HMSO recommendations, 127–8, 129 influence of size on readability, 123 Monotype Bembo, 128 Monotype Caslon, 129, 130 ‘Old Style’, 127, 129 sans serif, 109 ‘Scotch’, 125–6 Times New Roman, 120 typesetting/typesetters, 57, 58, 84, 92, 94, 104–9, 116–17, 119, 151; see also composition; phototypesetting typographers/typography, 94, 120, 121, 122–47 Tytler, Sarah (Henrietta Keddie), 212, 388, 389 unions see trade unions United States copyright law, 186 emigration to, 4 expansion of literary market, 390 Universal Postal Union, 32 Universal Radiotelegraph Union, 32 universities, 314, 315, 326 and poets, 405–6 Universities (Scotland) Act (1889), 314 University of Edinburgh, 124 School of Scottish Studies, 10 University of Toronto Press (Canada), 59 Ur-sgeul, 10, 293 urbanisation, 1–2 Valentine, James, 170, 173 Valentine, Tom, 139 Vallance, David, 151 Varga, Zsuzanna, 256–9 Varityper Com/Edit 6400, 116 Vaucher, Charles, 342 Veitch, Sophie F. F., 212 vellum, 96 Verse, 11, 267, 268–9 Vidal, Gore, 451 view-books, 173 Viking, 63 Virginian, The, 26 Vital Spark, The (television programme), 26 Vivendi, 349, 350, 464 Vivian, Arthur, 18, 21 Voice of Scotland, The, 240, 242, 401 Vox, 241 Wagner, John, 381 Wagner, Leopold, 369 Walker, Emery, 124 Wallis, Lawrence, 118 Walls, William, 153 Walsh, Louise, 184 Walton, Cecile, 159, 160, 161 Walton, Edward, 155 War, The (magazine), 189, 190 Ward, Simon, 15, 83–94, 387, 403–5, 409–30 Warde, Beatrice, 116 Warlord, 382

524

edinburgh history of the book in scotland

Warner, Alan, 201, 265, 408 Warr, Charles L., 306 Warrack, Frank, 305 Waterstones, 87–8, 446, 472 Watkin, Peter, 26 Watkins, Dudley Dexter, 370, 376 Watson, John see Maclaren, Ian Watson, Roderick (Rory), 258, 275 Watson, Rosamund Marriott, 221 Watson, W. J., 286 Watt, A. P. (Alexander Pollock), 38, 387, 390–1, 413, 417, 419 websites, 167, 269, 473–4; see also internet Wee Macgreegor stories, 211–12, 225 Weekly News, 369 Weekly Welcome, 369, 371 Wellington, Hubert, 161 Wells, H. G., 77, 130, 188, 191 Welsh, Irvine, 80, 201, 259, 265 Welsh, Louise, 201 Weproductions, 167 West Highland Free Press, 10, 27 West, Rebecca, 246, 252 West, Vita Sackville, 194 Westerman, Percy, 359, 361 Wheatley, John, 49 Whibley, Charles, 220, 221 Whitbread Book of the Year Award, 62, 265 White, Gleeson, 155 Whyte, Hamish, 267 Whyte, James, 156, 228, 241, 242, 305 Wigham, Eliza, 436 Wikipedia, 472 Wild Goose Publications, 305–6 Wild Hawthorn Press (WHP), 165, 178, 180 Wilde, Oscar The Picture of Dorian Gray, 221 Williams, David Pictures from No Man’s Land, 176 Williams, Helen, 14, 34–5, 47–9, 107–9, 356–8 Williamson, Kevin, 201 Wilson & Horton (New Zealand), 59 Wilson, Alexander, 125 Wilson, Frederick, 214, 215 Wilson, George Washington, 170, 173 Wilson, Jacqueline, 449 Wilson, Richard, 111 Wingate, James Lawton, 152 Wirten, Eva Hemmungs, 32 Wizard, 372, 373, 374 Wolfe Murray, Angus, 274

Wolfe Murray, Stephanie, 35, 272, 273–5 Wolters Kluwer, 33, 255, 333, 363 Woman, 382, 383 Woman at Home, The, 394–5 Woman’s Way, 371, 372 Woman’s Weekly, 383 Woman’s Welcome, 372 women as compositors, 131–2, 132–5 employed in making of books, 133 illustrators, 148 and libraries, 434 women readers, 433–4 women writers, 273–4 and Scottish Renaissance, 238–9 women’s magazines/papers, 271–2, 369, 373–4, 378, 382–3 wood engraving, 93 Wood, J. G., 331 Wood, Kenneth, 258 Wood, Mrs Henry, 362 wood pulp, 92, 96, 98 Wood, Wendy, 159, 161 Woodhall Mill, 99 Woolf, Leonard, 237 Woolf, Virginia, 237 Workers’ Circle, 440 workers’ reading rooms, 12 worksite missions, 437 World Publishing Company, 325 world wide web, 82, 269, 366, 473–4; see also internet; websites Wozniak, Steve, 118 Wright, Gordon, 167 Wright, John, 334 Wright, Peter Spycatcher, 415 Wright, Tom, 21 writers see authors WYSIWYG, 116 Xerox Star (8010), 117–18 Yeats, W. B., 130 The Collected Poems, 131 Young Adam (film), 30 Young, Douglas, 39 Young Folks, 390 Young, W. G., 306 Young, William, 174 Ziegler, Philip, 193