Few cities can boast such a distinguished literary pedigree as Edinburgh. Burns, Scott, Conan Doyle, Buchan, Dorothy Dunnett and J.K. Rowling have all lived in the city; Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon convalesced there (inspiring Pat Barker’s Booker-prize-winning Regeneration trilogy), and Dickens and Thackeray came on triumphant reading tours. Visitors have ranged from Defoe and George Eliot to Wordsworth, Hans Christian Anderson and the hundreds of renowned authors who now appear at one of the literary world’s most important annual events – The Edinburgh International Book Festival.
In addition, the city has inspired numerous works of fiction, ranging from Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie to Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting and Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus crime novels. Edinburgh’s most recent literary phenomenon is of course the internationally renowned Alexander McCall Smith, who has introduced the city to an even wider readership via Isobel Dalhousie and the inhabitants of 44 Scotland Street. And the city’s profile is to rise yet higher in light of its successful bid to be named the UNESCO-sponsored first World City of Literature (October 2004).
This new and hugely expanded edition of The Literary Companion to Edinburgh traces the city’s history from the Old Town, dominated by the Castle and the High Streets with its numerous wynds and closes, to the elegant and spacious New Town and its surrounding villages.
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