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Catherine Carswell and Burns


jasper

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I have just finished reading the magnificent life of Burns by Catherine Carswell. The weird thing is that the way people in Ayrshire lived in the 18th century was not substantially different from what I knew in Killie in the 1960s. Shagging was the paramount entertainment, drunkenness and song being second and third. Mrs. Carswell's book was published to a roar of hate from the Scottish literary establishment, but remains the definitive work on our national poet. She was a student of Literature at Glasgow University, but, to the eternal disgace of the unco guid, was not allowed to take a degree because she was a woman. Not a word of her beautifully-written text has dated. Published by Canongate. If you read nothing else this year, read this. She wasn't just a Burnsian, she championed D.H. Lawrence and was a great friend of his. There is a fragmentary autobiography, but I can't find it.

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