Precipitous city
Subtitle: the story of literary Edinburgh
By: Trevor Royle.
Publisher: Mainstream Pub.; Taplinger Pub.
Published: 1980
Place of publication: Edinburgh; New York
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 210
ISBN-13: 9780800865023
Subjects: Scottish literature -- History and criticism; Literary landmarks -- Scotland -- Edinburgh; Edinburgh (Scotland) in literature; Authors, Scottish -- Biography; Edinburgh (Scotland) -- Intellectual life
Description: Edinburgh is one of the most beautiful of the world's cities, a place of splendor whose craggy skyline brings together two entirely different worlds. To the south of its main thoroughfare, Princes Street, the Castle with the towering medieval tenements and spires of the old town within its protection; to the north, the cool elegance of Georgian architecture blessed by the Smile of Reason: it is a city of bewildering contrasts. It was with good reason that Edinburgh's writers proclaimed their native city with wit and gusto. Robert Burns addressed it heroically as "Scotia's Darling Seat," Sir Walter Scott, with his eye fixed firmly on the glorious past, held it for ever as his "own romantic town" and Robert Louis Stevenson, his mind sharpened by the pain of exile, called it, aptly enough, his "precipitous city."--Jacket flap.
Notes: Bibliography: p. 199-200.
Includes index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction; title: The golden age of Scots poetry; title: Reformation; title: The Castalian Band; title: Dark Ages; title: The Union and after; title: The eighteenth century Enlightenment; title: The Edinburgh of Sir Walter Scott; title: The Victorian Age; title: Modern times