Explores women's writing in Scotland across a range of periods and genres

From early modern to contemporary writing, these 15 essays examine women's engagement with different areas of literary production and discuss the implications of their literary output for our wider understanding of Scottish literature. The contributors consider the ways in which women writers worked with 'feminine' arenas such as spirituality, oral culture, domestic fiction and the 'private' writing of letters and diaries, as well as with the traditionally 'masculine' areas of Enlightenment culture and the periodical press. They offer insights into women's role within Gaelic culture, women's negotiations of space, place and national identities and their appropriations of specific forms, such as supernatural, detective and historical fiction. They also provide analysis of writing by Margaret Oliphant, Janet Hamilton, Marion Angus, Catherine Carswell, Naomi Mitchison, Dorothy Dunnett, Denise Mina, A.L. Kennedy, Ali Smith, Liz Lochhead and Kathleen Jamie amongst others.

Glenda Norquay is Professor of Scottish Literary Studies at Liverpool John Moores University. Her books include Robert Louis Stevenson and Theories of Reading and the edited collection Across the Margins (with Gerry Smyth).