The Road North: 300 Years of Classic Scottish Travel Writing

by June Skinner Sawyers (Editor), Daniel Defoe (Contributor), Washington Irving (Contributor)

Scotland is one of the most well-recorded countries in term of travel writing. The Romans were the first to record their impressions of the bleak and formidable frontier they had to confront and attempt to tame, but it is only over the last 300 years that a catalogue of published material has been created which allows the reader to discover the country as it once was.

Genres: Travel

320 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2001

About the author

Born in Glasgow, Scotland, June Skinner Sawyers is the author or editor of more than twenty books, many with a Celtic theme, including Celtic Music; Dreams of Elsewhere: The Selected Travel Writings of Robert Louis Stevenson; Praying with Celtic Saints, Prophets, Martyrs, and Poets; The Road North: 300 Years of Classic Scottish Travel Writing; and The Scots of Chicago: Quiet Immigrants and Their New Society.

Her essays, Weeping Willows and Long Black Veils: The Country Roots of Rosanne Cash, from Scotland to Tennessee appeared in Walking the Line: Country Music Lyricists and American Culture and Celtic Music in America in The Encyclopedia of Music and American Culture, respectively. In addition, her work has appeared in Scottish Tradition, The Chicago Tribune, The San Francisco Chronicle, Sing Out!, Dirty Linen, Booklist and The Common Review. In 2013, she was the recipient of the Flora Macdonald Award from St. Andrews University in Laurinburg, North Carolina, which is given to a woman of Scots birth or descent who has made an outstanding contribution to the human community.

Reviews

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intruiging collection of travel writing from the last 300 years. The excerpts focus on the people as well as the landscapes of Scotland.

[Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an entertaining and informative read. This compilation of excerpts from various classic travel writers' works written over a period of 300 years is both an introduction to a wide range of travel writers I had not been aware of and a taster of many parts of Scotland I have not yet visited. It was a book that I discovered at a holiday cottage we rented for a couple of months on the Cowal peninsula in 2021 and one that I will be purchasing as a springboard to help me read many of the works it draws from.