Berkley Center

Edinburgh was designated UNESCO’s first "City of Literature" in 2004, and even casually wandering the streets it is hard to escape the pervasive influence of the authors who have inhabited this city for centuries. Along the Royal Mile, the main artery of tourist activity in the city, there aren’t statues of political leaders or war memorials like you may find in Washington, DC or other global capitals. Instead there are statues of great Scottish thinkers like Adam Smith and David Hume. The statue of Hume, which bears noticeable resemblance to Georgetown’s own John Carroll statue, is particularly popular because his big toe is easily reachable by tourists seeking a silly photo. Even more iconic than the Royal Mile figures is the Scott Monument. The giant ornate Victorian structure surrounding a statue of the father of creative fiction, Sir Walter Scott, dominates the skyline along Princes Street and is one of the most recognizable sights in the entire city. It is the largest monument built to honor an author on the planet.

But the man whose creativity has most inspired the citizens of Edinburgh is farmer-poet Robert "Rabbie" Burns. In a 2006 poll by the BBC of the most famous figure in Scottish history, Burns received more votes than any other human (Nessie the Loch Ness Monster won first place in the poll, but only by two percent). Known as the "Heaven-Taught Plowman," Burns managed to capture the passionate cultural heritage of the Scottish people in a way few have ever come close to matching with poems like To a Mouse, Tam’o’Shanter, and Auld Lang Syne, and his early death at the age of 37 was considered a national tragedy. To this day, his birthday in late January is marked by the holiday Burns Night, a celebration of Scottish heritage, Burns’ life and poetry, and the ancient songs he worked so hard to preserve for future generations of Scots.

This literary influence on the city has also extended into my experience as a student at the University of Edinburgh. Many of the philosophers I am studying in my Scottish Enlightenment seminar were either students at Edinburgh University, professors at Edinburgh University, or were denied professorial positions by the university because their beliefs were too "radical" for the conservative Presbyterian Scottish Kirk (church). These men not only lived where I now live but likely studied where I study and crafted some of the most influential treatises of the eighteenth century where I cram in readings before discussions on those same works.

Even if I wanted to escape the literary influence, in some way it would always find its way back to the forefront of my experience. For example, when I signed up to write for the Student, the university’s newspaper, I was told that it is the United Kingdom’s oldest student newspaper (founded in 1856) and that it was started by none other than Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Kidnapped and Treasure Island, who was seeking a creative outlet his civil engineering major simply could not provide. Another example: at the local Writer’s Museum, I learned that a cabinet built by notorious Edinburgh thief Deacon Brodie was in Stevenson’s childhood bedroom. This inspired him to write a play about the duplicitous tradesman that cemented both his literary reputation within the city and Brodie’s historical notoriety. This notoriety may have led to the establishment of Deacon Brodie’s Tavern on the Royal Mile, which happens to be where I tried my first Scottish haggis. This example may be a bit of a stretch, but I think it illustrates my point that in Edinburgh everything is connected back to literature in one way or another.

Obviously, the city’s proud literary tradition didn’t stop with the death of "Caledonia’s Bard," Burns. It would be shameful to overlook the cultural significance of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, Alexander McCall Smith’s #1 Ladies Detective Agency, Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, or any of the other authors who have called Edinburgh home. In fact, as I am writing this post I am sitting in a coffee shop called the Elephant House—better known as the shop where a down-on-her-luck J.K. Rowling scrawled the first story of the Boy Who Lived on spare napkins.

This city’s amazing literary history has served as an inspiration for generations. For all I know, the next Robert Burns, David Hume, or J.K. Rowling may be crouched in a café somewhere in this city, composing their own masterpiece right now.