those published by James Orr of Glasgow in 1800 and by Blackie in 1820. Two of Isaac
Watts’s works had been translated into Gaelic by 1795, and his Divine Songs had gone
through numerous editions. Thomas Nelson started in Edinburgh by publishing
religious works, including children’s hymnals, and went on to publish evangelical
writers like Kingston, Ballantyne, and ‘A.L.O.E.’ (Charlotte Maria Tucker). He also
published many religious magazines for family and children’s reading, like The
Children’s Paper (1855–1925) Throughout the nineteenth century, too, the SPCK
through its Scottish branch promoted Christian knowledge in Sunday schools; other
bodies like the Glasgow Religious Tract Society were also active. Many local publishers
like John Ritchie, motivated by the urge to combat the immoral effects of reading fiction,
produced evangelical books and periodicals for children, such as The Young Watchman.
The nineteenth century saw major children’s writers like George MacDonald (1824–
1905) emerge. His powerful religious and allegorical works for adults (for example, Lilith,
1895) and for children (for example, At the Back of the North Wind, 1871) reveal both the
Celtic and religious traditions of Scottish writing, as well as German Romanticism. Tales
like ‘Sir Gibbie’ (1879) also show realistic Scottish settings. His influence on the fantasy
of C.S.Lewis, who edited an anthology of his work in 1946, is well known. Another writer
drawn to the fantasy tradition was Andrew Lang (1844–1912), whose ‘colour’ fairy books
(from The Blue Fairy Book, 1889, to The Lilac Fairy Book, 1910) and stories such as ‘Prince
Prigio’ (1889) are still of interest to both children and scholars.
Inspired by Sir Walter Scott’s (1771–1832) stirring historical tales like Rob Roy (1818)
and Guy Mannering (1815), with their feel for the romance and character of Scotland,
later Scottish writers returned to historical themes. Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–
1894) set Kidnapped (1886), and the more mature The Master of Ballantrae (1888)
against the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion. Naomi Mitchison (b.1897) draws on history and
classical mythology in many of her children’s books.
A second major development through the nineteenth century leads off from Tobias
Smollett’s picaresque nautical tales, such as Roderick Random (1748) and the work of
Captain Marryat. This can be seen most obviously in the extensive work of
R.M.Ballantyne (1825–1894), whose The Coral Island (1858) was one of seven titles he
published with Nelson before moving to James Nisbet, in R.L. Stevenson’s Treasure
Island (as a book 1883), and in the output of Gordon Stables (1849–1910). Writers for
adults, John Buchan and Arthur Conan Doyle have both offered much for young
readers in the adventure genre. Kailyard writer Samuel Rutherford Crockett (1859–
1914) moved into this area with The Raiders (1893), in the style of Stevenson.
There has been a sentimental streak to the Scottish characterisation of children and
childhood, perhaps best known in J.M.Barrie’s Peter Pan. Barrie’s view of childhood and
the psychological dimensions of this in his life are explored by a number of his
biographers. The distinct theme of ‘childhood’ trots alongside mainstream reading for
children, in works like J.J.Bell’s Wee Macgreegor (1902) with its humorous and
sentimental sketches of a boy in a working-class Glasgow family, in novels about
childhood by writers such as J.F.Hendry and Robin Jenkins, and in autobiographies of
Scottish authors such as Compton Mackenzie, Naomi Mitchison and Neil Gunn. Gunn’s
evocation of boyhood in Morning Tide (1931) and Highland River (1937) is memorable, as
is the ‘Reachfar’ world of Jane Duncan (1910–1976) which, though adult, led to some
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