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An Excursus into Bookbinding: MacLehose of Glasgow
A couple of days ago, I had bindings on my mind. I’d been discussing Scottish bindings with a friend and that evening found myself looking at my own library for any which stood out from the ordinary run. Pulling a couple of volumes off the shelves, the third Miscellany of the Spalding Club (Aberdeen, 1846) and…
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The Protean Chapter
There was one chapter of my doctoral thesis I just couldn’t crack. I must have rewritten it four or five times, hating it every time, and the incarnation which finally made its way into my first book had more or less nothing in common with the initial draft other than subject. My basic problem was…
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Mural Monuments in Crail
I’ve been interested in the remarkable early modern epigraphic landscape of Crail kirkyard (in the East Neuk of Fife) for about as long as I’ve been interested in carved stones. A while ago I wrote a small piece on Crail, comparing its carved stones with analogous wooden relics for the Scottish Archaeological Research Framework, and…
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On Generative Writing
Almost a month ago, I talked about planning my summer writing goals and, especially, the book chapter I wanted to write first: a look at the reception of French archival and textual theories in early Enlightenment Scotland. I finished a first draft of that chapter earlier today and thought that now might be a good…
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Back to the Book
When I signed my book contract in February, I wrote that I hoped to blog on the experience of completing The First Scottish Enlightenment. Predictably, term-time intervened and I’ve had little enough progress to report over the last few months. Now that marking is (mostly) over, though, and I have only one or two pressing…
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What David Drummond Read
One chapter of my new book is devoted to the reception of the historical-antiquarian works I study. As part of that I’ve been putting together a sprawling spreadsheet of the 4,000 or so persons known to have subscribed for scholarly texts published in Edinburgh between 1708 (when publication by subscription seems to have first been…
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Teaching Older Scottish Literature
This afternoon I found myself filling out paperwork with a lighter mood than usually attends such activities. Why? I was writing the course description for a new fourth-year module I’ve been wanting to teach for a very long time: Scottish literature from Renaissance to Enlightenment. My own exposure to the period as an undergraduate was…
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The Canon Industry
Several years ago I went to a lecture in Cambridge given by Norman Davies, the historian of Central and Eastern Europe. The most memorable part of that evening was when my wife and I – both starving students at the time – ate so many canapés at the reception afterwards that a grim-faced member of…
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The First Scottish Enlightenment: Contract Signed!
It’s a real pleasure to write that as of last week I’ve signed a contract with Oxford University Press for The First Scottish Enlightenment: Rebels, Priests, and History, with a manuscript due-date of spring 2018. Going into the second book project I felt as if I understood the process much better than when I was working…
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The Future of Early Modern Scottish Studies
What a great conference! I probably shouldn’t say that quite so unreservedly, given that I was one of the organisers, but last weekend’s conference on “The Future of Early Modern Scottish Studies” really did exceed all expectations. Over two days we had twenty-two speakers from across Europe and America, two roundtable discussions, five debate-filled coffee…
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Kelsey Jackson Williams 