Explore Literary Edinburgh
As Scotland’s Capital, Edinburgh Has Strong Literary Connections
Dec 12, 2008
When the poet Allan Ramsay (1686-1758) opened Britain’s first circulating library in Edinburgh in 1726 he stimulated the production of books and inspired a vibrant literary community in Edinburgh that survives today.
Edinburgh’s Poetic Golden Age
Medieval Edinburgh was already a flourishing literary city before Ramsay’s day. Gavin Douglas (c1474-1522) was Dean of St Giles’ Cathedral, the High Kirk of Edinburgh, east of Edinburgh Castle. Douglas translated the ‘Aeneid’, the first translation of a Latin poem printed in English.
William Dunbar (c1456-c1513) was a court poet in Edinburgh in the late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-centuries. His work was first printed in 1508 and is the earliest example of Scottish typography.
Sir David Lindsay (c1486-1555) scandalized the Scottish court with his play ‘Satyre of the Thrie Estatis’ in 1540, a piece frequently performed at the Edinburgh Festival today.
Edinburgh in the Age of Enlightenment.
During his short life Robert Fergusson (1750-74) captured the spirit of the Enlightenment in Edinburgh with his revival of the Scots vernacular (known as ‘Lallans’ from the word Lowland), which inspired later generations, including Robert Burns. His famous Lallans poem ‘The Farmer’s Ingle’ clearly foreshadows Robert Burns’s ‘The Cotter’s Saturday Night’ in its description of rustic life. Fergusson’s poetry also satirized Edinburgh’s literary elite; a sentiment that Robert Burns also felt.
Robert Fergusson is buried in Canongate Kirk, originally in an unmarked grave, which so horrified Robert Burns that he paid for a headstone.
A later but no less conspicuous figure of the Edinburgh Enlightenment was Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832). He lived in a house in Castle Street, Edinburgh, and as a teenager had once met Robert Burns at a nearby literary gathering. Sir Walter Scott later established the historical novel as a form that has survived in literature since the anonymous publication of his first novel ‘Waverley’ in 1814. In 1827 Sir Walter Scott publicly admitted authorship of this seminal novel during a grand dinner at the Assembly Rooms on Edinburgh’s George Street.
Sir Walter Scott’s seventh novel ‘The Heart of Midlothian’ appeared in 1818, taking its name from the old Edinburgh Tolbooth (prison), known as the ‘Heart of Midlothian’. The Old Tolbooth site can still be seen beside Edinburgh’s St Giles’ Cathedral and is marked by a heart-shaped alcove. It was considered good luck to spit on the alcove as a sign of contempt for Edinburgh’s authorities. Please don’t do this today, otherwise you might end up in a more modern cell!
Victorian Literary Edinburgh
Edinburgh’s literary reputation; its publishers (which included such prestigious names as Thomas Nelson, J Bartholomew, Oliver Boyd and W&R Chambers), its tavern culture and buzzing creativity attracted writers from all over the world. Edinburgh was the first city to recognize the achievements of Charles Dickens by making him a freeman of the city of Edinburgh. Edinburgh was also the hub of a number of literary periodicals, including the Quarterly Review (1809-1967), the Edinburgh Review (1802-1929) and Blackwood’s Magazine (1817-1980), and often antagonised many literary rivalries!
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) was an Edinburgh native who became one of Edinburgh’s most famous Victorian writers. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote of Edinburgh not just in romantic terms but in a style which still brings its taverns and low life alive. In the 1890s Robert Louis Stevenson observed in his ‘Picturesque Notes on Edinburgh’, “The Palace of Holyroodhouse has been left aside in the growth of Edinburgh, and stands grey and silent in a workman’s quarter among breweries and gasworks.” This emotion permeates Robert Louis Stevenson’s work and is epitomised in ‘The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’, which was inspired by Deacon Brodie, a respectable Edinburgh locksmith by day and a villain by night.
The attractive little hamlet of Swanston, to the south of Edinburgh, is also associated with Robert Louis Stevenson – his family had a summer cottage there – and is part of the setting for his unfinished novel ‘St Ives’.
Literary Edinburgh in the 20th Century
Scotland’s most influential modern poet Hugh MacDiarmid (1892-1978) had strong connections with Edinburgh through his various publishing ventures. His revival of the Scots literary tradition in the 1920s echoed that of his forebears Robert Fergusson and Robert Burns 150 years earlier.
Another notable character of Edinburgh literary culture was the novelist Muriel Spark (b 1918), who was educated at James Gillespie’s High School for Girls in Edinburgh. Her alma mater provided the model for Miss Brodie’s Marcia Blaine School for Girls in ‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’, which was set in Edinburgh in the 1930s.
Edinburgh’s Literary Life Today
Edinburgh’s hectic literary community continues apace with unflagging vitality. The Edinburgh International Festival takes place in Edinburgh every August and September. This important cultural event includes the Edinburgh Book Festival, which attracts thousands of literary enthusiasts from all over the world.
Edinburgh’s literary heritage is so profound it even has its own Writers’ Museum. This interesting gem exhibits memorabilia celebrating the lives and works of Burns, Scott and Stevenson and is well worth a visit. You can find it on the north side of Lawnmarket, in Lady Stair’s Close. It is free admittance and open 10am-8pm Monday – Saturday (also Sundays 2-5pm during Festival time).
After pounding Edinburgh’s cobblestones hunting down that elusive first edition, you can relax and unwind, and even rub shoulders with poets and writers, in one of Edinburgh’s “literary” pubs such as Milne’s Bar on Hanover Street – proof, if it were needed – that Edinburgh still thrives as one of the world’s most influential literary cities.
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