The Watcher by the Threshold: Shorter Scottish Fiction [Paperback]

John Buchan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2001

This is the first ever complete collection of all Buchan's shorter Scottish fiction. Set largely in his beloved Borders, these stories and novellas show the full range and depth of Buchan's writing. Featuring shepherds, poachers, gamekeepers, and drovers, they are worlds away from the tales of aristocratic adventure with which he is so often associated. Shot through with characters and places he returned to in his full-length fiction, the Buchan that emerges from this collection is a very different and much more complex writer than he is often held to be.

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About the Author

John Buchan (1875-1940), had a long and successful literary and public career. He was educated in Glasgow, where his father was a Free Church minister in the Gorbals, but his childhood holidays were spent in the Scottish border country. After graduating at Glasgow University, Buchan took a scholarship to Oxford where he wrote his first two historical novels while still an undergraduate. With interests in law and journalism, he worked for the British High Commission in South Africa at the end of the Boer War. Returning to London in 1903, he eventually became a director of Thomas Nelson the publishers. Buchan worked for the Ministry of Information during WWI, and later wrote a substantial history of the conflict. He became a Tory MP for the Scottish Universities from 1927 to 1935, in which year he was appointed Governor-General of Canada as Lord Tweedsmuir. 

Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Canongate UK (January 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0862416825
• ISBN-13: 978-0862416829
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 4.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,050,315 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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