Berkley Center

When I got to Edinburgh, I arrived at Waverley train station, christened after Sir Walter Scott’s series of the same name, I passed the Scott Monument, the tallest monument to a writer in the world. I walked onto one of those double-decker buses that, for an American of a certain age, immediately invokes images of Harry Potter, and I was carried to the building where I would live, one that also once housed the famous Scottish novelist Muriel Sparks. Ignorant and under the influence of that invigorating blush that is arriving in a new place for the first time, Waverley was just a charming British name; the glimmering capitalism of the city’s main shopping area eclipsed the giant, Gothic Scott Monument; and my observations about my new home revolved around the lack of an elevator for my luggage (the bus did and always will recall that brooding British boy of my adolescence).

Though Google or a guidebook could have informed me about all that I had overlooked, time is necessary to appreciate what this first UNESCO City of Literature offers: it is a book to be read and lived. As my first month here has unraveled, so has my experience with more of the city’s literary past and present: I’ve visited the Writer’s Museum, which celebrates the work of Robert Burns, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Sir Walter Scott, and navigated my way past the line to the Elephant House, the cafe where JK Rowling reputedly wrote the first Harry Potter book. It seems that Edinburgh creates writers like other cities emit smog: it is a city that presents itself in verse, producing prose. With a beautiful facade and a dark underbelly, it makes sense that the city has inspired many works and writers—but several places house provoking beauty and grit. What makes Edinburgh, and Scotland, such a special place for the written word?

Throughout its history, Scotland has not only been literary, but highly literate. As early as 1496, the Scottish Parliament passed the world’s first compulsory education law, mandating that landowners had to send their eldest sons to school at the age of six. The sixteenth century saw the concept of compulsory education carried further with the religious reformer John Knox, who proposed that education be accessible, comprehensive, and free to all. Rooted in the belief that all should be able to read the Bible, Knox helped spread literacy across the nation. By the 1790s, almost all Scots, regardless of wealth, status, location, or gender, could read. This has given Scots plenty of ability, and time, with words.

Currently, there are substantial efforts being made to maintain the Scottish literary culture. Edinburgh is home to the world’s largest International Book Festival and has even created its own version of a poet laureate: the Edinburgh Makar. Makar is an old Scots word that stresses the role of the poet or author as a skilled and versatile worker in the craft of writing, and the position was assigned to celebrate the importance of writers in Scottish lives. Literature Alliance Scotland, one organization of many whose mission is to maintain this heritage, explains the value of this literary identity: “Literature is the living memory of a nation. Scotland’s literature is critical to understanding our present, connecting with our past, and imagining Scotland’s future.” As I shape my own brief future here over the next semester, I look forward to continuing to engage literature as a lens into Scottish life.