Kirkyard Romanticism

The early nineteenth century saw the dead take on new life in Scottish literature; sometimes quite literally. This book brings together a range of Scottish Romantic texts, identifying a shared interest an imagined national dead. It argues that the publications of Edinburgh-based publisher William Blackwood were the crucible for this new form of Scottish cultural nationalism. Scottish Romantic authors including James Hogg, John Wilson and John Galt, use the Romantic kirkyard to engage with, and often challenge, contemporary ideas of modernity. The book also explores the extensive ripples that this cultural moment generated across Scottish, British and wider Anglophone literary sphere over the next century.

Sarah Sharp is a lecturer in Scottish Literature at the University of Aberdeen and deputy director of Aberdeen's Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies. She completed her doctoral studies at the University of Edinburgh and has previously held positions at the University of Otago and University College Dublin. She was selected for a Fulbright Scottish Studies Scholar Award in 2018 and was based at the University of South Carolina. Sarah's research is focused on Scottish literature and the long nineteenth century. She has published articles on James Hogg, shipboard diaries, Robert Burns, crime writing and settler colonialism.