Mind that night in November, the pair of us
bursting from Mareel like late-comers
to the cinema-dark of the evening.
How we nearly missed it, the other show
that night: the aurora, the dancers, unspooling
their reels of green across the sky…
—Roseanne Watt, “Mareel”
published in MODER DY (Polygon, 2019)
https://birlinn.co.uk/product/moder-dy/
#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Shetland #November #auroraborealis
What Did Sigmund Freud Have to Say About Leonardo da Vinci?
According to Sigmund Freud, Leonardo da Vinci’s early life experiences as a child raised by a single mother shaped his art and research.
by Anastasiia Kirpalov
https://www.thecollector.com/what-sigmund-freud-say-leonardo-da-vinci/
Freud and Da Vinci at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/391
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/1629
Another book list to tempt you, this one thanks to the excellent journal, World Literature Today, of their choice of seventy-five notable translations into English published in 2025.
#books #literature #translations #reading @bookstodon
43 of the Most Iconic Short Stories in the English Language
From Washington Irving to Kristen Roupenian
by Emily Temple
Short stories at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/bookshelf/634
Roch the wind in the clear day’s dawin
Blaws the cloods heelster-gowdie ow’r the bay,
But there’s mair nor a roch wind blawin
Through the great glen o’ the warld the day…
—Hamish Henderson, “The Freedom Come-All-Ye”
Published in The Golden Treasury of Scottish Verse, @canongatebooks
https://canongate.co.uk/books/3267-the-golden-treasury-of-scottish-verse/
#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #song #HamishHenderson #20thcentury #change #hope
#OTD in 1841.
Punch magazine, founded in London by Henry Mayhew and engraver Ebenezer Landells, is edited by Mayhew and Mark Lemon.
Historically, it was most influential in the 1840s and 1850s, when it helped to coin the term "cartoon" in its modern sense as a humorous illustration. Artists at Punch included John Tenniel who, from 1850, was the chief cartoon artist at the magazine for over 50 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punch_(magazine)
Punch at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=punch&submit_search=Go%21
Settling accounts
Before he was famous, Jean-Jacques Rousseau was Louise Dupin’s scribe. It’s her ideas on inequality that fill his writings
by Rebecca Wilkin
Rousseau at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/1286
Push the Boat Out 2025
20–23 Nov, Edinburgh
This year’s Push the Boat Out festival sets sail from 20–23 November with a bold mix of poetry, performance, music & art in a sparkling celebration of words in all their forms, with over 120 artists on board!
But in the climbing ecstasy of thought,
Ere consummation, ere the final peak,
Come hours like this…
—Nan Shepherd, “Summit of Coire Etchachan”
published in WANDERERS: A History of Women Walking, by Kerri Andrews
Today, 11 December, is International Mountain Day
https://www.un.org/en/observances/mountain-day
#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #mountains #cairngorms #NanShepherd #climbing #20thcentury #womenwriters #naturewriting #InternationalMountainDay
Nam bhodach liath a-nis
a’ streap gu mullach a bhràighe,
chan eil mi a’ còrdadh riut, a Llywarch,
mun bhata càm is riatanach gach là…
—Uilleam Nèill, “Freagairt Do Llywarch Hen”
published in FRIENDS & KANGAROOS: New Writing Scotland 17 (ASL, 1999)
(Llywarch Hen, c.534–608 CE, was an early Welsh poet & prince of Rheged, who complained about his advancing age & dependence on his walking stick)
#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Gaelic #Gaidhlig #Welsh #CelticStudies
Fog shroud
and clouds
(when the clock
chimed late
in the heavy
November night-
time) lifting
the mystery
for a greater…
—Edwin Morgan, “Guy Fawkes Moon”
published in COLLECTED POEMS (Carcanet, 1997)
https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781847779656/collected-poems/
#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #GuyFawkes #BonfireNight #November5th
"The dusk crept out across the fields wiping out the day's light."
Black April (1927)
American author Julia Peterkin died #OTD in 1961.
In 1929 she won the Pulitzer Prize for Novel/Literature for her novel Scarlet Sister Mary. She wrote several novels about the plantation South, especially the Gullah people of the Lowcountry. She was one of the few white authors who wrote about the African-American experience.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Peterkin
"He had come on her that morning in a moment of disarray; her face had been pale and altered, and the diminution of her beauty had lent her a poignant charm. That is how she looks when she is alone! had been his first thought; and the second was to note in her the change which his coming produced."
"The House of Mirth" (1905), bk. 1, ch. 6
~Edith Wharton (24 January 1862 – 11 August 1937)
Books by Edith Wharton at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/104
#OTD in 1951.
J. D. Salinger publishes his popular yet controversial novel, The Catcher in the Rye.
Between 1961 and 1982, The Catcher in the Rye was the most censored book in high schools and libraries in the United States. According to the American Library Association, The Catcher in the Rye was the 10th most frequently challenged book from 1990 to 1999.
The mighty Mavors, jealous to behold
A Mars more mighty nor himself below,
Did once resolve his rivall to ore’throw…
—Sir Robert Ayton (1569–1638), “Upon the 5th of November”
published in JACOBEAN PARNASSUS: Scottish Poetry from the Reign of James I (ASL, 2022)
https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/volumes/jacobean-parnassus/
#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #17thcentury #EarlyModern #BonfireNight #GuyFawkes #Jacobean #5thNovember
“Ach thèid an crann a thoirt dhen fharadh”: Celebrating Thirty Years of Tuath is Tighearna (‘Tenants and Landlords’), 1995-2025
21 Nov, University of Edinburgh. Free, ticketed
This year's Canna Lecture will be delivered by Dr Martin Macgregor who will assess the impact of Donald Meek's anthology of 19th-century Gaelic verse, Tuath is Tighearna (SGTS, 1995), thirty years on from its publication.
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/canna-lecture-2025-tickets-1924250979479
#Scottish #literature #Gaelic #Gaidhlig #poetry #19thcentury #Victorian
c. 1813, London. Reading List
John Stuart Mill turns the page. via @laphamsquart
"I have no remembrance of the time when I began to learn Greek. I have been told that it was when I was three years old...."
https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/ways-learning/reading-list/?campaign=FE7LQA2
Dod! – that’s him nou – eik up the byne;
afore the hairth, his claen sark hing:
pit claes is waffin on the line;
merle on a rowan singin fine.
—David Purdie, “Merle on a Rowan”
https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/merle-rowan/
#Scottish #literature #Scotstober #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage
Robert Louis Stevenson’s KIDNAPPED began life serialised in a children’s magazine, but its sophistication & depth won the lifelong admiration of Henry James.
In this episode of NOVEL APPROACHES, Clare Bucknell, Andrew O’Hagan & Tom Crewe explore RLS’s startlingly modern handling of perspective & pacing, his approach to the art of fiction, & the value of being ‘betwixt & between’.
#Scottish #literature #19thcenyury #RobertLouisStevenson #KidLit #ChildrensLiterature
“It's not the barbarian who threatens us, it's civilization that frightens us.”
Brazilian sociologist and journalist Euclides da Cunha died #OTD in 1909.
His most important work is Os Sertões (Rebellion in the Backlands), a non-fictional account of the military expeditions promoted by the Brazilian government against the rebellious village of Canudos, known as the War of Canudos.
The Oxfam bookshop on Glasgow’s Byres Road moved, recently, to a new location further down the hill – but I’m very pleased that they managed to take Alasdair Gray’s mural with them! I think he did this when on a break from painting the ceiling in Òran Mór …
#Scottish #literature #Glasgow #AlasdairGray #Murals #VisualArt
Alasdair Gray’s “The Great Bear Cult” is a script for a (rejected) documentary on the movement which briefly swept Britain in the 1930s. Although mention of the Cult is still suppressed, @canongatebooks includes the script in UNLIKELY STORIES, MOSTLY
Today, 7 November, is Hug A Bear Day 🧸
@bookstodon
#OTD in 1856.
Wilkie Collins' "Anne Rodway", a story in diary form about a needlewoman and her fiancé investigating the murder of a friend, appears in Household Words (first chapter), as the first English story to feature a woman as the main detective character.
The story is set in mid-19th century London, depicting the harsh realities of life for the working poor.
https://djo.org.uk/household-words/volume-xiv/page-1.html
"Not uselessly employed,
Might I pursue this theme through every change
Of exercise and play, to which the year
Did summon us in his delightful round."
In July 1850.
William Wordsworth's The Prelude; or, Growth of a Poet's Mind: An Autobiographical Poem, on which he has worked since 1798, is first published about three months after his death by Edward Moxon in London in 14 books, with the title supplied by the poet's widow, Mary.
Reading Jane Austen’s Final, Unfinished Novel
How Jane Austen has remained a phenomenon for more than two centuries.
By Martin Amis. December 31, 1995 via @NewYorker
![broadcast and displayed, surely the BBC would be interested? It was not. I discovered that although Lord Reith's restrictions upon clothing, drink and sexual conduct had for years been matter for jest in the corridors of Broadcasting House and the Television Centre, his tabu upon all reference to the cult after Ramsay McDonald's famous broadcast to the nation was still in force. The BBC rejected my documentary drama. I offer it here, hoping readers will not be afraid to view it upon the television screen of their minds.
[ILLUSTRATION: In the centre is Rupert the Bear's smiling face, a tartan scarf around his neck; on either side, between 2 tall bearskin hats as worn by British guardsmen on parade, stand 2 portly, Winnie-the-Pooh-like figures, facing inwards, heads tilted proudly skywards. Each has their right arm raised in a fascist salute.]
1 STUDIO INTRODUCTION
To a recording of The Teddy Bears' Picnic the camera advances upon a commentator leaning casually against a table on which is displayed: a fancy-dress bear costume, a toy teddy bear, a Buckingham Palace sentry's bearskin helmet, a Daily Express Rupert Bear cartoon annual, and a copy of The House at Pooh Corner.
RECORDING: If you go down to the woods today
you're sure of a big surprise!
If you go down to the woods today
you'd better go in disguise!
For every bear that ever there was
Has gathered there for certain because
Today's the day the teddy bears have their picnic!
COMMENTATOR: If you go down to the woods](/proxy/post_attachment/899662/7f585ffe8a.jpg "broadcast and displayed, surely the BBC would be interested? It was not. I discovered that although Lord Reith's restrictions upon clothing, drink and sexual conduct had for years been matter for jest in the corridors of Broadcasting House and the Television Centre, his tabu upon all reference to the cult after Ramsay McDonald's famous broadcast to the nation was still in force. The BBC rejected my documentary drama. I offer it here, hoping readers will not be afraid to view it upon the television screen of their minds.
[ILLUSTRATION: In the centre is Rupert the Bear's smiling face, a tartan scarf around his neck; on either side, between 2 tall bearskin hats as worn by British guardsmen on parade, stand 2 portly, Winnie-the-Pooh-like figures, facing inwards, heads tilted proudly skywards. Each has their right arm raised in a fascist salute.]
1 STUDIO INTRODUCTION
To a recording of The Teddy Bears' Picnic the camera advances upon a commentator leaning casually against a table on which is displayed: a fancy-dress bear costume, a toy teddy bear, a Buckingham Palace sentry's bearskin helmet, a Daily Express Rupert Bear cartoon annual, and a copy of The House at Pooh Corner.
RECORDING: If you go down to the woods today
you're sure of a big surprise!
If you go down to the woods today
you'd better go in disguise!
For every bear that ever there was
Has gathered there for certain because
Today's the day the teddy bears have their picnic!
COMMENTATOR: If you go down to the woods")
