A Scots Quair is a trilogy by the Scottish writer Lewis Grassic Gibbon, describing the life of Chris Guthrie, a woman from the north-east of Scotland during the early 20th century.
It consists of three novels: Sunset Song (1932), Cloud Howe (1933), and Grey Granite (1934). The first is widely regarded as an important classic (voted Scotland's favourite book in a 2005 poll supported by the Scottish Book Trust and other organisations). [1] [2]
The central character is a young woman, Chris Guthrie, growing up in a farming family in the fictional Estate of Kinraddie in The Mearns (Kincardineshire) in north-east Scotland at the start of the 20th century. Life is hard, and her family is dysfunctional. She marries a farmer, Ewan Tavendale, who dies in World War I.
Cloud Howe continues the story of Chris Guthrie. She marries for a second time to Robert Colquhoun, a Church of Scotland minister. At the end of the novel, he dies in the pulpit while delivering a sermon.
Grey Granite takes the story of Chris Guthrie further. She moves to the fictional city of Duncairn (previously referred to in Cloud Howe as Dundon). In the Introduction, Gibbon points out that Dundon/Duncairn is based neither on Aberdeen nor on Dundee (as some reviewers had surmised) but is "merely the city which the inhabitants of The Mearns (not foreseeing my requirements in completing my trilogy) have hitherto failed to build". An important character is her son by her first marriage, Ewan Tavendale, Jr., who becomes a left-wing political activist.
TV adaptations of all three works were made by the BBC in 1971, 1982 and 1983, respectively. They were scripted by Bill Craig, and Vivien Heilbron played Chris.
Kincardineshire, also known as the Mearns, is a historic county, registration county and lieutenancy area on the coast of northeast Scotland. It is bounded by Aberdeenshire on the north and west, and by Angus on the south.
Agnes Grey, A Novel is the first novel by English author Anne Brontë, first published in December 1847, and republished in a second edition in 1850. The novel follows Agnes Grey, a governess, as she works within families of the English gentry. Scholarship and comments by Anne's sister Charlotte Brontë suggest the novel is largely based on Anne Brontë's own experiences as a governess for five years. Like her sister Charlotte's 1847 novel Jane Eyre, it addresses what the precarious position of governess entailed and how it affected a young woman.
Lewis Grassic Gibbon was the pseudonym of James Leslie Mitchell, a Scottish writer. He was best known for A Scots Quair, a trilogy set in the north-east of Scotland in the early 20th century, of which all three parts have been serialised on BBC television.
Spartacus is a historical novel by the Scottish writer Lewis Grassic Gibbon, first published in 1933 under his real name of James Leslie Mitchell.
Laurencekirk, locally known as Lournie, is a small town in the historic county of Kincardineshire, Scotland, just off the A90 Dundee to Aberdeen main road. It is administered as part of Aberdeenshire. It is the largest settlement in the Howe o' the Mearns area and houses the local secondary school; Mearns Academy, which was established in 1895 and awarded the Charter Mark in 2003.
Sunset Song is a 1932 novel by Scottish writer Lewis Grassic Gibbon. It is considered one of the most important Scottish novels of the 20th century. It is the first part of the trilogy A Scots Quair.
The Green Ray is a novel by the French writer Jules Verne published in 1882 and named after the optical phenomenon of the same name. It is referenced in a 1986 film of the same name by Eric Rohmer.
Edith MacArthur was a Scottish actress noted for her elegant screen presence.
The Angel Mountain Saga of eight novels was written by Welsh author Brian John, and was first published at the rate of one volume per year in 2001-2005, with later volumes in 2007, 2009 and 2012. The publisher is Greencroft Books, based in Newport, Pembrokeshire. The novels tell of the life and times of Mistress Martha Morgan, a feisty heroine who starts the series in 1796 as a pregnant and suicidal eighteen-year-old and finishes it by going to her grave in 1855. In the sixth novel she is resurrected and has further adventures in Merthyr Tydfil and further afield. Volumes seven and eight are placed into gaps in the narrative related in Volume Three. The eight novels are "On Angel Mountain" (2001), "House of Angels" (2002), "Dark Angel" (2003), "Rebecca and the Angels" (2004), "Flying with Angels" (2005), "Guardian Angel" (2007), "Sacrifice" (2009) and "Conspiracy of Angels" (2012).
"The Twa Magicians", "The Two Magicians", "The Lady and the Blacksmith", or "The Coal Black Smith" is a British folk song. It first appears in print in 1828 in two sources, Peter Buchan's Ancient Ballads and Songs of the North of Scotland and John Wilson's Noctes Ambrosianae #40. It was later published as number 44 of Francis James Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads. During the 20th century, versions of it have been recorded by a number of folk and popular musicians.
Arbuthnott is a hamlet and parish in the Howe of the Mearns, a low-lying agricultural district of Aberdeenshire, Scotland. It is located on the B967, east of Fordoun and north-west of Inverbervie. The nearest railway station is Laurencekirk.
Drumlithie is a village in the Howe of the Mearns in southern Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Situated seven miles south of Stonehaven in the parish of Glenbervie, it is affectionately known by locals as "Skite", although the origin of this name remains disputed. The name "Drumlithie" may incorporate the Gaelic word druim, meaning "ridge".
Vivien Heilbron is a Scottish actress.
My Mortal Enemy is the eighth novel by American author Willa Cather. It was first published in 1926.
Cathy MacDonald is a Scottish broadcaster who is known for hosting many Scottish Gaelic-language television programmes such as Dotaman and has also presented BBC Scotland's Reporting Scotland news bulletins in the late 1980s, where she mostly presented the breakfast bulletins but occasionally presented the evening news throughout this period as well.
Margery Greenshields Palmer McCulloch was a Scottish literary scholar, author and co-editor of the Scottish Literary Review.
Moira Armstrong is a Scottish television director whose career has expanded over nearly fifty years.
The novel in Scotland includes all long prose fiction published in Scotland and by Scottish authors since the development of the literary format in the eighteenth century. The novel was soon a major element of Scottish literary and critical life. Tobias Smollett's picaresque novels, such as The Adventures of Roderick Random and The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle mean that he is often seen as Scotland's first novelist. Other Scots who contributed to the development of the novel in the eighteenth century include Henry Mackenzie and John Moore.
Sunset Song is a 2015 British drama film written and directed by Terence Davies and starring Agyness Deyn, Peter Mullan and Kevin Guthrie. It is an adaptation of Lewis Grassic Gibbon's 1932 novel of the same name. It was shown in the Special Presentations section of the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival and was released in the United Kingdom on 4 December 2015. The film follows Chris Guthrie, the daughter of a Scottish farmer in the early 1900s.
Sunset Song is a 1971 BBC Scotland adaptation of Lewis Grassic Gibbon's novel of the same name for television.