Reassessing John Buchan:
Beyond The Thirty-Nine Steps
Editor: Kate Macdonald
978 1 85196 998 2: 234x156mm: £60.00/$99.00
978 1 85196 586 1
This is the first collection of edited essays on the novelist John Buchan (1875—1940), author of, among many other works, The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915), Witch Wood (1927) and Sick Heart River (1940). Over fifteen established scholars reconsider Buchan’s writing and reputation from the perspective of the twenty-first century.
Beyond The Thirty-Nine Steps examines all Buchan’s major fiction and non-fictional writing, and builds on an increasing interest from the academy in positioning Buchan as a strong creative force in Scottish and English literature, politics and public life, from the fin-de-siècle to the Second World War. Several of his key works are examined from multiple perspectives, and new research is incorporated into established traditions.
Readership
Twentieth-Century Literature, Scottish Studies
Contents
Kate Macdonald, Introduction
Part I: Cultural Contexts
Paul Grant, ‘Buchan’s Supernatural Fiction’
J C G Grieg, ‘Calvinism in John Buchan’
Michael Haslett, ‘Buchan and the Classics
Ahmed K al-Rawi, The Treatment of Islam and the East in John Buchan’s Novels'
Part 2: Uses of Language
Alan Riach, ‘John Buchan: Politics, Language and Suspense’
John Miller, ‘The Anarchist’s Garden: Politics and Ecology in John Buchan’s Wastelands’
Tony Williams, ‘Tracing The Thirty-Nine Steps in Film’
Douglas Kerr, ‘John Buchan, Joseph Conrad, and Hypertextuality’
Part 3: Looking Inside
Kate Macdonald, ‘The Evolution of Buchan’s Women Characters, from the fin-de-siècle to the 1930s’
Nathan Waddell, ‘Mr Standfast and the Problem of Conscience’
Simon Glassock, ‘Potency in Physicality: Sport in Buchan’
H E Taylor, ‘Conquistadors: The Businessman in Buchan’
David Goldie, ‘”Twin Loyalties”: Buchan the Englishman’
Part 4: Reaching Out
Hew Strachan, ‘John Buchan and the First World War’
Bill Nasson, ‘John Buchan and the Creation of the Springbok Warrior’
Michael Redley, ‘John Buchan and Propaganda’
Peter Henshaw, ‘An Alliance Born of a Common Culture? John Buchan’s Strategies for Linking the United States and the ‘British World’, 1914-1940’