Sunset Song

Lewis Grassic Gibbon was the pseudonym of James Leslie Mitchell , a Scottish writer. Born in Auchterless and raised in Arbuthnott, then in Kincardineshire, Mitchell started working as a journalist for the Aberdeen Journal and the Scottish Farmer at age 16. In 1919 he joined the Royal Army Service... Corps and served in Iran, India and Egypt before enlisting in the Royal Air Force in 1920. In the RAF he worked as a clerk and spent some time in the Middle East. He married Rebecca Middleton in 1925 and they settled in Welwyn Garden City. He began writing full-time in 1929. Mitchell wrote numerous books and shorter works under both his real name and his nom de plume before his early death in 1935 of peritonitis brought on by a perforated ulcer. Mitchell attracted attention from his earliest attempts at fiction, notably from H. G. Wells, but it was his trilogy entitled A Scots Quair, and in particular its first book Sunset Song, with which he made his mark. A Scots Quair, with its combination of stream-of-consciousness and lyrical use of dialect, is considered to be among the defining works of 20th century Scottish Renaissance.
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A Scots Quair is a trilogy by the Scottish writer Lewis Grassic Gibbon, describing the life of Chris Guthrie, a woman from the north east of Scotland during the early 20th century. It consists of three novels: Sunset Song, Cloud Howe, and Grey Granite. The first is widely regarded as an important... classic but opinions are more varied about the other two. The central character is a young woman, Chris Guthrie, growing up in a farming family in the fictional Estate of Kinraddie in "The Mearns" in the north east of Scotland at the start of the 20th century. Life is hard, and her family is dysfunctional. Cloud Howe continues the story of Chris Guthrie from the first part, Sunset Song. It gives an account of her life during her second marriage to Robert Colquhoun, a Church of Scotland minister. At the end of the novel he dies in the pulpit while delivering a sermon. Grey Granite continues the story of Chris Guthrie/Tavendale/Colquhoun. She moves to the fictional city of Duncairn .
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