Eggplant.place

44d

Twenty years ago this week, Black Watch first shocked, thrilled & moved audiences in its world premiere at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

To celebrate, BBC Scotland will air a special filmed performance of the play on 1 August.

“Black Watch: A Soldier’s Story”, the documentary exploring the journey of the landmark production, will also be aired on 1 August.

The play is currently available on the iPlayer (UK only):

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b007xrqx/artworks-scotland-the-black-watch

#Scottish #literature #drama #theatre #BlackWatch

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36d

"Fair is foul, and foul is fair;
Hover through the fog and filthy air."
Witches, Scene I

This Week in Literary History: William Shakespeare’s Macbeth is Performed for the First Time (Probably)

Toil and Trouble

https://lithub.com/this-week-in-literary-history-william-shakespeares-macbeth-is-performed-for-the-first-time-probably/?utm_source=Klaviyo&utm_medium=campaign&utm_id=01KZ3Y4R24JD84TJKRTY97KA54&_kx=3MZUehzXM-41qlWAMPUiuNZadX2p0SByuNf_t0eMLB0.U5D8ER

Macbeth by William Shakespeare at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1533

#books #literature

The title page of Macbeth, printed in the Second Folio of 1632.

It is showing the opening scenes with the three witches and King Duncan receiving news of battle, printed in early modern typography with decorative header ornamentation, on page 151.

ALT

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44d

“Although this was his first visit, Conan Doyle already knew something of Egypt. The country had been a popular theme in the European imagination, a place of mystery and glamour that had inspired various European works of art in the nineteenth century, from Shelley’s sonnet ‘Ozymandias’ to Verdi’s opera Aida.”

—Arthur Conan Doyle in Egypt

https://euppublishingblog.com/2026/07/21/arthur-conan-doyle-in-egypt/

#Scottish #literature #ConanDoyle #19thcentury #Victorian #Egypt #imperialism #orientalism

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29d

Acknowledging Agnes Owens: a celebration of her writing & legacy
24 September, Òran Mór, Glasgow – free

Launch event for the Byres Road Book Festival, in collaboration with the Agnes Owens Archive – with Dani Garavelli, Kirstin Innes, William Letford, & Chitra Ramaswamy

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/acknowledging-agnes-owens-a-celebration-of-her-writing-and-legacy-tickets-1995450547303

#Scottish #literature #AgnesOwens #20thcentury #womenwriters #Glasgow

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27d

I send to you, commissioners,
A paper that may please ye, sirs
(For troth they say it might be worse‍‍
An’ I believe’t)…

—Robert Louis Stevenson, “To the Commissioners of Northern Lights”, which Stevenson sent to them along with his design for “a new form of intermittent light”

This weekend is International Lighthouse & Lightship Weekend

1/5

https://illw.net

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #ScotsLanguage #RobertLouisStevenson #19thcentury #Victorian #lighthouse #engineering

To the Commissioners of Northern Lights
Robert Louis Stevenson

I send to you, commissioners,
A paper that may please ye, sirs
(For troth they say it might be worse‍‍
An’ I believe’t)
And on your business lay my curse‍‍
Before I leav’t.

I thocht I’d serve wi’ you, sirs, yince,
But I’ve thocht better of it since;
The matter I will nowise mince,‍‍
But tell ye true:
I’ll service wi’ some ither prince,‍‍
An’ no wi’ you.

I’ve no been very deep, ye’ll think,
Cam’ delicately to the brink
An’ when the water gart me shrink‍‍
Straucht took the rue,
An’ didna stoop my fill to drink—‍‍
I own it true.

I kent on cape and isle, a light
Burnt fair an’ clearly ilka night;
But at the service I took fright,‍‍
As sune’s I saw,
An’ being still a neophite‍‍
Gaed straucht awa’.

Anither course I now begin,
The weeg I’Il cairry for my Sin,
The court my voice shall echo in,‍‍
An’—wha can tell?—
Some ither day I may be yin‍‍
O’ you mysel’.

ALT

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29d

Nae wind comes owre sae free
Upon the yirden rose
As hill-blawn winds that gae
Whaur the white bloom grows…

—William Soutar, “Summer Song”
published in WILLIAM SOUTAR: Collected Works (Tippermuir, 2024)

https://tippermuirbooks.co.uk/product/william-soutar-collected-works-vols-1-2/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #Scots #Scotslanguage #WilliamSoutar

Summer Song
by William Soutar

Nae wind comes owre sae free
Upon the yirden rose
As hill-blawn winds that gae
Whaur the white bloom grows.

There is nae biggit bower
Sae gledsome for the sicht
As the sma', wilder'd fleur
Flanterin' wi' licht.

And herts will tine their fear
Whan love sae freely blaws,
Open to joy and care
As the sma', white rose.

ALT

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29d

Dream of me riding the horse you galloped as a girl –
the one that rode onto the ferry

just as the floor was rising up, in the days when
horses rode the wild sea…

—Jackie Kay, “Dream Pier”
published in DARLING (Bloodaxe, 2007)

https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/darling-877

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry

Jackie Kay
Dream Pier

Dream of me riding the horse you galloped as a girl –
the one that rode onto the ferry

just as the floor was rising up, in the days when
horses rode the wild sea.

Dream of us swimming in the crazy sea,
our wet hair dark as seals

just as they rise up from the salt water
sleek, slippery clever.

Dream of you, dream of me, and the old country,
strolling in the heather.

Dream of the years falling off, and the rainy weather.
Then dream of us as girls,

Bold girls who become black horses, black horses who bolt
the stable one dark night.

ALT

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43d

DNA and Archeological Research Reveal the Overlooked History of Japan’s Women Warriors

By Sage Helene

https://mymodernmet.com/japan-women-samurai-archaeology/?utm_source=convertkit&utm_campaign=daily-digest&utm_content=link&utm_term=07292026&utm_medium=email

Books about Japanese fiction at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/subject/36794

#books #literature #history

"Hangakujo". The female warrior samurai Hangaku Gozen by Yoshitoshi (1839-1892). From the series "Yoshitoshi mushaburui: A series of warriors by Yoshitoshi." Published in "The Floating world of Ukiyo-e," essays by Sandy Kita, New York, 2001, no. 72, p. 135. Exhibited at "The Floating world of Ukiyo-e: shadows, dreams and substances," organized by the Library of Congress, 2001.

A woodblock print depicting an onna-musha (female samurai warrior) mounted on a rearing white horse. She wears red and black lacquered armor with a quiver of arrows on her back, and holds a bow.

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43d

How Shakespeare and his contemporaries used music to rouse emotions

by Shirley Bell

Shakespeare used music in a multitude of ways to delight, amuse, relax, confuse and frighten his audiences.

https://theconversation.com/how-shakespeare-and-his-contemporaries-used-music-to-rouse-emotions-287118?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20July%2030%202026%20-%203892139637&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20July%2030%202026%20-%203892139637+CID_1d72a754d221aafee869a5348be8a6e0&utm_source=campaign_monitor_uk&utm_term=How%20Shakespeare%20and%20his%20contemporaries%20used%20music%20to%20rouse%20emotions

Books by Shakespeare at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/65

#books #literature #music

The Chandos portrait, likely depicting Shakespeare, c. 1611

It shows Shakespeare with a receding hairline, dark curly hair, a gold hoop earring, mustache and small beard, wearing a black doublet with a white collar against a dark background.

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43d

“You will have heard that I am going to commence Poet in print; and to-morrow my works go to the press. I expect it will be a volume of about two hundred pages. It is just the last foolish action I intend to do—and then turn a wise man as fast as possible.”

The “Kilmarnock Edition” of Robert Burns’s Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect was published #OTD, 31 July, 1786.

https://digital.nls.uk/poems-chiefly-in-the-scottish-dialect/archive/74464614#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=0&xywh=-9336%2C-785%2C21170%2C15693

#Scottish #literature #poetry #18thcentury #RobertBurns #romanticism #BookHistory

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118d

To Noroway, to Noroway,
To Noroway o’er the faem;
The king’s daughter o’ Noroway,
’Tis thou maun bring her hame…

The ballad “Sir Patrick Spens” is probably based on the 1290 mission to Norway to fetch the 7-year-old princess Margaret, heir to the Scottish crown, following the death of Alexander III

🇳🇴🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

#Scottish #literature #ballad #poem #Norway #Nasjonaldagen #poetry

A stained-glass window by Charles Cameron Baillie, c.1930, from Abbot House, Dunfermline. It depicts a three-masted sailing ship in full sail on a stormy green-blue sea with white wave-caps. There are red flags flying from the ship's masts. Some of the sails have yellow stripes on them; one might have a sunburst design, but it's tucked in behind other sails and is hard to see. One sail at the front is a black-and-white chequerboard, and at the prow of the ship, on the bowsprit, is a sail displaying the blue-and-white Scottish saltire, a white X on a blue background.

Underneath, on a scroll, are the words

To Noroway, To Noroway
To Norway Ower the Faem

ALT

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77d

Claude Monet by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Renoir and Monet studied painting together at the atelier of Charles Gler in Paris. Renoir submitted this painting to the first Impressionist exhibition in Paris in 1874

#reading #book #art #painting #bookstodon @bookstodon #literature #book #readingcommunity #bookstagram #BookTok #bookish

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27d

Honoré de Balzac’s La Comédie Humaine is a Hindu mandala

The 19th-century novelist Honoré de Balzac was Catholic, French to the core and obsessed with the material details of French society. Yet there is something profoundly Hindu in the way he sought to understand the world.

by Harsh Trivedi (from the archives)

https://theconversation.com/honore-de-balzacs-la-comedie-humaine-is-a-hindu-mandala-262151

Books by Balzac at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/251

#books #literature

Title page of Honoré de Balzac's Cousin Bette (1846).

It is showing a woman in dark mourning-style dress sitting on a stool beside a bed, watching over a figure lying beneath the covers in a sparse attic room with exposed wooden beams and a small skylight.

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29d

These Plays Are Now in the Public Domain. Theatres Should Take Advantage

by Chris Peterson

https://www.onstageblog.com/editorials/2026/8/11/these-plays-are-now-in-the-public-domain-theatres-should-take-advantage

Books by Noël Coward (Private lives coming pretty soon) at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/32147

#books #literature #theatre #publicdomain

Poster from the 1968 Theatre De Lys production featuring a sketch of Coward.

It is featuring a caricature illustration of a bald man in a tuxedo smoking a cigarette holder, with cast names listed below including Elaine Stritch and Lea Bowman, directed by Charles Nelson Reilly.

ALT

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28d

Every Novel Is Boring—Until It Isn’t

With almost every novel I read, I go through the same arc. At first the novel bores me. Then, suddenly, it becomes the most interesting thing in the world.

by Emma Adler

https://www.publicbooks.org/every-novel-is-boring-until-it-isnt/

Books about Literary Fiction at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=literary+fiction

#books #literature

Augustus Leopold Egg, The Travelling Companions, 1862, oil-on-canvas, 65.3 × 78.7 centimetres (25.7 × 31.0 in), Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.

It depicts two nearly identical young women in matching pale silk dresses seated in a train carriage — one asleep, the other reading — with a Mediterranean coastal landscape visible through the window.

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28d

“Worthless Idiot, Donkey Head”
Parodies of Pedantry on the Renaissance Stage

By Arnoud S. Q. Visser via @publicdomainrev

Pompous know-it-alls were once a mainstay of mockery on the Italian stage.

https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/parodies-of-pedantry/

Il pedante by Francesco Belo is available at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34640

#books #literature #pedantry

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28d

The Tragedy of Loving Sylvia Plath

Sarai Walker on Obsession, Ownership, and Plath Worship

https://lithub.com/the-tragedy-of-loving-sylvia-plath/

#books #literature #poetry

This black-and-white photo of Sylvia Plath shows her from the chest up. She faces left and looks away from the camera. Her short dark hair has bangs, and she wears a shirt or jacket with wide lapels.

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28d

“The influence of Walter Scott can be felt in every province of the literature of his age.”
—Pushkin

Walter Scott was born #OTD, 15 Aug 1771. He was & is one of the most significant figures in world literature

@litstudies

1/2

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/issues/issue-16/

#Scottish #literature #WalterScott #SirWalterScott #19thcentury #romanticism #novel

A portrait head of Walter Scott, painted by Sir Henry Raeburn, c.1822–23, oil on canvas. Walter Scott is clean shaven, with thinning fair hair brushed across a high forehead. His grey-blue eyes look out past the viewer, at something we cannot see.

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28d

“Scott is the most filmic of writers… He may be considered difficult to read today, long-winded & meandering by modern standards, but his narratives still come alive when the characters move dramatically in a visual world”

—Walter Scott & Cinema

1/2

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2013/05/wattie-goes-to-hollywood-scott-scotland-and-film/

#Scottish #literature #WalterScott #SirWalterScott #19thcentury #Victorian #romanticism #novel #cinema #film #cinemahistory

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28d

Walter Scott, Opera, & the Italian Journey

“What was it about Scott’s poems and novels that attracted composers all over Europe—and inspired more than seventy operas? […] We have four on Rob Roy, four on The Heart of Midlothian, eight on The Bride of Lammermoor, and no less than eleven each on Ivanhoe and Kenilworth.”

📷 “Lucia di Lammermoor”, Metropolitan Opera 2011

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2011/05/scott-opera-and-the-italian-journey/

#Scottish #literature #WalterScott #SirWalterScott #19thcentury #Victorian #opera #classicalmusic

Natalie Dessay as Lucia di Lammermoor for the Metropolitan Opera in 2011. The photo shows a young woman in a white wedding dress. She holds one hand to her cheek and looks upwards and away, with a lost, distracted expression. She has long, dark hair. Her raised hand, and the entire front of her white dress, is splashed with red blood. Behind her, a group of men and women in what appear to be late-19th-century formal clothes are seen, out of focus, standing on a curving stair.

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42d

It was upon a Lammas night,
When corn rigs are bonie,
Beneath the moon’s unclouded light,
I held awa to Annie…

—Robert Burns, “Corn Rigs”
pages from Robert Burns: Selected Poems & Songs (OUP, 2013)

Today, 1 August, is Lammas Day

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/selected-poems-and-songs-9780199682324?cc=gb&lang=en&

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #song #18thcentury #folksong #RobertBurns #Lammas #LammasDay #romanticism #Scots #Scotslanguage

SONG
Tune-Corn Rigs are bonie

It was upon a Lammas night,
When corn rigs are bonie,
Beneath the moon's unclouded light,
I held awa to Annie:®
The time flew by, wi' tentless heed,
Till 'tween the late and early;
Wi' sma' persuasion she agreed,
To see me thro' the barley.

The sky was blue, the wind was still,
The moon was shining clearly;
I set her down, wi' right good will,
Amang the rigs o' barley:
I ken't her heart was a' my ain;
I lov'd her most sincerely;
I kiss'd her ore and owre again,
Amang the rigs o' barley.

I lock'd her in my fond embrace;
Her heart was beating rarely:
My blessings on that happy place,
Amang the rigs o' barley!
But by the moon and stars so bright,
That shone that hour so clearly!
She ay shall bless that happy night,
Amang the rigs o' barley.

ALT

I hae been blythe wi' Comrades dear;
I hae been merry drinking;
I hae been joyfu gath'rin gear;
I hae been happy thinking:
But a' the pleasures e'er I saw,
Tho' three times doubl'd fairly,
That happy night was worth them a',
Amang the rigs o' barley.

CHORUS
Corn rigs, an' barley rigs,
An' corn rigs are bonie:
I'll ne'er forget that happy night,
Amang the rigs wi' Annie.

ALT

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42d

Men slapped the ponies from pit bank to field,
slammed the gate shut and left them to their fortnight
but it rained solid so their poor backs turned black-sodden as old carpet.

Told not to, the boy went out with brown apples and endearments,
dug his nails into their manes, gave each one a Sunday name…

—Pippa Little, “Lammas Goldfish”
published in NAMING THE SNAKES: New Writing Scotland 44 (ASL, 2026)

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/newwriting/nws44/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Lammas

Pippa Little
Lammas Goldfish

for Ray

Men slapped the ponies from pit bank to field,
slammed the gate shut and left them to their fortnight
but it rained solid so their poor backs turned black-sodden as old carpet.

Told not to, the boy went out with brown apples and endearments,
dug his nails into their manes, gave each one a Sunday name. Then
saw it first, flickering, inner-lit through the gloom of their trough,

strange discarded thing from a drunken homecoming
the night of the Lammas fair, won for a kiss perhaps,
beautiful, the word hurt in his mouth.

And kept watch day after day as it swelled in its pink-gold
pomp, memorised every curved samurai scale,
its secret flowering. Until one morning early

he came to the field to find it gone,
the water numb and calm and grey
and every beast led back inside the earth.

ALT

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28d

From Sept 2025 – Dr Gerard McKeever, lecturer in modern Scottish literature at the University of Edinburgh, speaks about Walter Scott’s relationship with Scotland, particularly through the lens of his so-called “Scotch Novels”

@litstudies

1/2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twvrXYw1Sus

#Scottish #literature #WalterScott #SirWalterScott #Scotland ##19thcentury #Victorian #novel

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35d

My new book 'Atlas Gothica: An Alternative Guide to the World's Most Curious Destinations' (Headline/Hachette) is now on pre-order! The book takes in 50 Gothic destinations around the world, including vampire-plagued Victorian graveyards, haunted English libraries, witch-haunted caves, mummy-stuffed catacombs, Dracula's Whitby and much more. You can discover the very raven the inspired Edgar Allan Poe, a Chinese city based on a blueprint of hell, the tombs of Voodoo queens, and the lair of the legendary Mothman. Grab it here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Atlas-Gothica-Alternative-Curious-Destinations/dp/1035434385/ #gothic #folklore #history #mythology #weird #paranormal #literature #travel #books #graveyard #death #ghost #vampire #vampires

The front cover, back cover and spine of the book 'Atlas Gothica: An Alternative Guide to the World's Most Curious Destinations' by David Castleton. The book has the title and blurb in silver lettering on a mainly black background, with silver highlights in an abstract map-like design.

The blurb reads: "Step off the tourist trail to discover 50 darkly captivating locations - from the eerie Lockrum Island monastery to the legendary lair of the Mothman, and from China's mysterious ghost city of Fengdu to the windswept moors that inspired 'Wuthering Heights'. With rich storytelling and atmospheric photography revealing the myths, legends and histories behind each destination, this is the ultimate gothic travel guide for anyone drawn to the dark side."

ALT

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28d

He will outlast us, churning out his books,
advocate and historian, his prose
earning him Abbotsford with its borrowed gates,
its cheap mementos from the land he made…

—Iain Crichton Smith, “At the Scott Exhibition, Edinburgh Festival”
published in DEER ON THE HIGH HILLS (Carcanet, 2021)

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781800170940/deer-on-the-high-hills/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #WalterScott #IainCrichtonSmith #writers #writing