Description

Birlinn Limited [Published Date: 2002]. Softcover, 320 pp. First edition. In very good condition. Illustrated paper covers have light bumping and creasing to edges and light overall scuffing. Light fading to top edge of covers. Binding tight. Pages clean and unmarked. [From back cover] Although now rightfully regarded as one of Scotland's greatest writers, Neil Munro's reputation has fluctuated over the last hundred years. An immensely successful novelist in the early 1900s, he was attacked twenty years later by Hugh MacDiarmid for not addressing contemporary Highland issues. At his death in 1930 he was commonly referred to as the heir to Scott and Stevenson, but by the 1980s the novels on which that reputation was built were out of print. That Vital Spark is the first comprehensive anthology of Neil Munro's work. It presents a rich and varied selection of some of the best of his light fiction, literary short stories, journalism, criticism, descriptive writing and poetry, much of which has never previously been available in book form. Also included are two very early short stories in the thriller genre and the opening chapters of his unfinished last novel, The Search. All this allows his work as novelist, poet, journalist and critic to be properly assessed for the first time. All the pieces in this collection are accompanied by full introductions and, where necessary, explanatory notes. Brian D. Osborne and Ronald Armstrong edited the successful Birlinn editions of Munro's Erchie, Para Handy, and Jimmy Swan anthologies, which played a significant part in the Munro revival.