Chronology; Introduction Gerard Carruthers and Liam McIlvanney; 1. Scottish literature before Scottish literature Thomas Clancy; 2. The Medieval period Alessandra Petrina; 3. Reformation and Renaissance Sarah Dunnigan; 4. The aftermath of Union Leith Davis; 5. Robert Burns Nigel Leask; 6. Enlightenment, Romanticism and the Scottish Canon: cosmopolites or narrow nationalists? Murray Pittock; 7. Scott and the historical novel Ian Duncan; 8. The Gaelic tradition Peter Mackay; 9. Scottish Gothic David Punter; 10. Victorian Scottish literature Andrew Nash; 11. Robert Louis Stevenson Penny Fielding; 12. Hugh MacDiarmid and the Scottish Renaissance Scott Lyall; 13. Popular fiction: detective novels and thrillers from Holmes to Rebus David Goldie; 14. Muriel Spark Robert Hosmer; 15. The Glasgow novel Liam McIlvanney; 16. 'What is the language using us for?': Modern Scottish poetry Fiona Stafford; 17. The emergence of Scottish studies Matthew Wickman; 18. Otherworlds: devolution and the Scottish novel Cairns Craig; 19. Scottish literature in diaspora Gerard Carruthers; Index.