William Alexander

The published work of William Alexander is the surest contemporary guide to the social history of the countryside of North-East Scotland in the nineteenth century. In this selection of his writing, which includes essays from the Aberdeenshire Free Press and chapters from his masterpiece Johnny Gibb of Gushetneuk, Ian Carter shows how Alexander's writing reflected the lives that real people enjoyed and endured in the countryside of Victorian Scotland and thus contributed to vital debates about the proper shape of that countryside. Taken as a whole, Alexander's writing is a matchless account of the aspirations of a peasantry resisting full integration into capitalist agriculture. It runs directly counter to the policies that we have taken for granted for two generations, and this selection may encourage North-East folk - and other Scots - to challenge these assumptions. It will certainly help them reclaim some of their history.

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