A collection of essays to celebrate both the centenary and the literary achievement of Lewis Grassic Gibbon will be published in June of this year by the Association of Scottish Literary Studies with the support of The Grassic Gibbon Centre at Arbuthnott. This book has developed out of the highly successful conference held at the University of Aberdeen in June 2001 to mark Gibbon’s centenary and contains most of the conference papers given then, together with some additional invited contributions. We have titled it A Flame in the Mearns: Lewis Grassic Gibbon: A Centenary Celebration and we hope that it will confirm Gibbon’s continuing relevance to Scottish Literature in this new century.

Grassic Gibbon is probably the best known and most loved of the major writers of the twentieth-century interwar literary revival, with his Sunset Song appearing regularly among listings of the most popular Scottish books. It is surprising, therefore, that there is as yet quite a small collection of critical studies of his work. A Festschrift planned shortly after his untimely death in 1935 did not in the end come to fruition; and apart from Peter Whitfield’s Grassic Gibbon and his World (1996), British book-length studies are confined to the twenty years between 1966 and 1986. A Flame in the Mearns will itself be the first collection of essays by individual contributors on Gibbon’s fiction, non-fiction prose and his poetry.

So far as Gibbon’s contemporary reputation is concerned, our collection of essays appears to suggest that his major fictional achievement lies with his Scottish work - something that was not so clear, especially to the writer himself, in his own time. On the other hand, there is currently an on-going project (first with Polygon, now with Birlinn) to bring the Mitchell ‘English’ fiction back into print and we hope that this centenary collection of essay may provide the impetus for a new exploration and evaluation of the English work in future studies.

A Flame in the Mearns will be launched at the Annual General Meeting of the Association for Scottish Literary Studies on 28th June 2003 in the College Club, Glasgow University, from 2 - 4 p.m. We hope to have refreshments and some musical entertainment and extend a warm invitation to all those who enjoy the work of both Gibbon and Mitchell to join us in Glasgow on that afternoon.

Editors

CONTENTS

ASLS CONFERENCE

9 June 2001