An Orkney Tapestry
Edited by Linden Bicket , Kirsteen McCue / Written by George Mackay Brown
£12.99
- Paperback
- E-Book
581 in stock
Reviews
He transforms everything by passing it through the eye of the needle of Orkney'
Seamus Heaney
[Brown] is a uniquely observant and skilful chronicler of life in his native Orkneys, past and present'
Times Literary Supplement
Brown has perfected a narrative style of great simplicity'
Douglas Dunn
Linden Bicket and Kirsteen McCue have done invaluable service to scholarship'
The Tablet
A rich fusion of ballad, folk tale, short story, drama and environmental writing'
The Scotsman
About the Book
First published in 1969, An Orkney Tapestry, George Mackay Brown's seminal work, is a unique look at Orkney through the eye of a poet. Originally commissioned by his publisher as an introduction to the Orkney Islands, Brown approached the writing from a unique perspective and went on to produce a rich fusion of ballad, folk tale, short story, drama and environmental writing. The book, written at an early stage in the author’s career, explores themes that appear in his later work and was a landmark in Brown’s development as a writer. Above all, it is a celebration of Orkney's people, language and history. This edition reproduces Sylvia Wishart’s beautiful illustrations, commissioned for the original hardback.
Made available again for the first time in over 40 years, this new edition sits alongside Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain as an important precursor of environmental writing by the likes of Kathleen Jamie, Robert Macfarlane, Malachy Tallack and, most recently, Amy Liptrot.
The Authors
Linden Bicket
Linden Bicket is Lecturer in Literature and Religion in the School of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh. She is the author of George Mackay Brown and the Scottish Catholic Imagination (Edinburgh University Press, 2017). Her research focuses on patterns of faith and scepticism in twentieth-century fiction and poetry.Kirsteen McCue
Kirsteen McCue is Professor of Scottish Literature & Song Culture and Co-Director of the Centre for Robert Burns Studies at the University of Glasgow. She has published widely on song culture and is co-editor with Pam Perkins of Women's Travel Writings in Scotland (Taylor & Francis, 2016). She teaches an undergraduate course called 'Scottish Journeys', featuring An Orkney Tapestry.George Mackay Brown
George Mackay Brown (1921–96) was one of the twentieth century’s most distinguished and original writers. His lifelong inspiration and birthplace, Stromness in Orkney, moulded his view of the world, though he studied in Edinburgh and later at Newbattle Abbey College. In 1941 he was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis and lived an increasingly reclusive life in Stromness, but he produced a regular stream of publications from 1954 onwards. These included A Calendar of Love (1967), A Time to Keep (1969), Greenvoe (1972), Hawkfall (1974), and, notably, the novel Beside the Ocean of Time (1994), which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the Saltire Book of the Year.You may also like…
-
Paperback | Pub: 27 Jun 2019£8.99Thorfinn Ragnarson is the daydreaming son of a tenant farmer, avoiding both work and school despite the best efforts of family, friends and neighbours. Instead, the boy dreams up elaborate historical fantasies of himself as a Viking traveller, a...
-
Paperback | Pub: 27 Jun 2019£8.99First published in 1973 by the Hogarth Press, Magnus is George Mackay Brown’s tour de force – his most poetic and innovative book. He links the twelfth-century story of the saintly Earl Magnus of Orkney’s brutal murder at the hands of his...
-
Paperback | Pub: 27 Jun 2019£8.99George’s memory is inseparable from Orkney, where he was born the youngest child of a poor family and which he rarely left. His mother was a beautiful woman who spoke only Gaelic and his father was a wit, mimic and singer, who also doubled as...
-
Paperback | Pub: 27 Jun 2019£8.99Bestowed at birth with two gifts, an ivory flute and a bag of silver and gold coins, a young girl wanders through time. She is destined to pursue the dragon of war and before he consumes the world in flames, subdue him not with violence but music....
-
Paperback | Pub: 27 Jun 2019£8.99Vinland follows the turbulent life of Ranald Sigmundson, a young boy born into the Dark Ages when Orkney was torn between its Viking past and its Christian future. Struggling to understand the conflicts of his home, Ranald seeks adventure and...
-
Paperback | Pub: 27 Jun 2019£8.99These two long stories are set, like most of George Mackay Brown’s work, in Orkney and in a period, the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when the pattern of island life, little changed since Viking times, was beginning to be threatened. The...
