John Buchan
BOOKS BY JOHN BUCHAN.
Buchan wrote over one hundred books and hundreds of articles. His literary output ranged widely, from his well-known thrillers to children's books, romances, biographies, poetry, anthologies, fantasy and short stories. For a list of his books see Chronological Bibliography page. There were several Unified Editions of his works published by Nelsons in Edinburgh. These comprised of 30 volumes including novels, biographies, short stories and poetry. The following are snippets about some of his books.
Biographies of John Buchan.
For an insight into the life of John Buchan but more particularly for a comprehensive overview of all Buchan's books the following biographies are of note:-
Janet Adam Smith, John Buchan, 1965.
Andrew Lownie, The Presbyterian Cavalier, 1995 and 2002.
Ursula Buchan, Beyond the Thirty-Nine Steps, A Life of John Buchan, 2019.
NOVELS.
Buchan is probably best remembered for his adventure novels featuring the Scottish born mining engineer from South Africa, Richard Hannay. In particular the first of these The thirty-nine steps published in 1914. This was followed by the sequel Greenmantle published in 1916, Mr. Standfast in 1919 and The Three Hostages published in 1924. There have been three film adaptions of the The thirty-nine steps. The first in 1936 starring Robert Donat and directed by Alfred Hitchcock was titled The 39-Steps - the different title indicating that it was not a film of the book. The second film in 1958 starring Kenneth More was a remake of the Hitchcock film. The third film in 1978 starring Robert Powell reverted to the book as much as possible and was titled The thirty-nine steps ie the same title as the book. This nicety of titles was missed by the Americans as advertisements for the 1978 film reverted to The 39-steps - there is an example showing this on an American cinema poster in the John Buchan Heritage Museum. There have also been many radio dramatisations of his works, particularly of the Hannay stories. In 2009 a very highly succesful comedy stage show based on the Hitchcock film opened in The West End and then on to Broadway. A book of the script of the stage show was published in 2010.
Hannay also featured in a short story The Green Wildebeest contained in the collection of short stories titled The Runagates Club published in 1928, also in the introduction to The Courts of the Morning published in 1929 and in his last outing in The Island of Sheep published in 1936. ( A previous book with the same title had been published in 1919 with is wife Susan Buchan. The authors of the work were given as Cadmus and Harmonia.)
Another unlikely Buchan hero was Dickson McCunn a retired Glasgow grocer. He appeared in three novels - Huntingtower published in 1922, Castle Gay in 1930 and The House of the Four Winds published in 1935.
Several of Buchan's novels are set in the Scottish Borders country including four set in the Upper Tweed Valley. He loved the Border Country and knew it well having walked its moorland hills and cycled its tracks many times and fished its many streams. The border landscape was one revered in Calvinistic history and Buchan had explored it in three early novels, Sir Quixote of the Moors (1895), John Burnet of Barns (1898) ,and A Lost Lady of Old Years (1899). He also used the names of localities in this area for the names/titles of some of the characters in his novels - Sir Edward (Leithen), Lord (Lamancha), Tommy (Deloraine), John (Laverlaw), Lewis (Haystoun), Mary (Lamington), Lady (Manorwater), Lady and Alison (Westwater), etc. For more about the two latter ladies see the Title of Tweedsmuir page.
Another area of Scotland that Buchan loved was the island of Skye and the adjacent area of Applecross/Torridon in Wester Ross. The following stories are set or partly set in this area - the short stories The Far Islands and Fountainblue, which Buchan wrote while at Oxford in 1899, were published in the collection of short stories The Watcher by the Threshold (1902), the Hannay stories Mr Standfast and The Three Hostages and last but not least John Mcnab (1925). John Macnab is a story of three friends - Edward Leithen, Lord Lamancha and John Palliser-Yeates who have the idea of taking a holiday at the Scottish West Highland Estate of Crask. To get over boredom they planned for an audacious challange to be sent to the three neighbouring estates that their respective properties would be poached between certain dates. This challenge was to be sent under synonym of John Macnab.
The Far islands is classed as a fantasy story and it is thought that this amongst other stories may have inspired Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings. There is an interesting connection between The Far Islands and John McNab and I have written a piece on this that can found on the John Buchan - The Pre Columbian Founding of America page. Here will also be found another connection with the island of sheep.
His book Witch Wood (1927) features the village of Woodilee which is a thinly disguised Broughton set in the Covenanting era of the 1640s - Buchan thought that this was his best novel.
A Lost Lady of Old Years (1899) is one of his earlier books about the real life John "Evidence" Murray who resided in a mansion on the northern outskirts of Broughton. Murray was secretary to Charles Edward Stewart (Bonny Prince Charlie). Murray turrned King's evidence resulting in the execution of, amongst others, Lord Lovat Fraser. Buchan wrote a piece about about John Murray of Broughton in Some eighteenth century byways, and other essays published in 1908.
John Burnet of Barnes (1898) which Buchan started writing when still a teenager is a historical romance set in 1678 concerning John Burnet of Barns and Marjorie Veith of Dawyck. Barns Tower which Buchan would have visited and featured in the book was in a ruinius state until recently. It has now been renovated (tastefully) and is a holiday let. Dawyck since the Veitches has been owned by the Naesmyths and Balfours. The magnificient gardens at Dawyck are now an outstation of the Royal Botanical Gardens of Edinburgh and are open to the public.
Part of Richard Hannay's Scottish adventure in The Thirty-Nine Steps probably commences in Galloway then continues to the moorlands of the Upper Tweed Valley. Although the book is fictitious, like some of his other books, partiucularly Castle Gay (1930) there are sufficient clues and pointers in the text to indicate the location of where the action is supposedly taking place.
Collected Short Stories.
1896 Scholar Gipsies.
Containing: Scholar Gipsies, April in the Hills, Milestones, May-Fly Fishing, The Men of the Uplands, Gentlemen of Leisure, Sentimental Travelling, Urban Grenery, Nature and the Art of Words. Afternoon, Night on the Heather, On Cademuir Hill, An Individualist, The Drove Road, Nuces Relictae, Ad Astra.
1899 Grey Weather.
Containing: Ballad for Grey Weather, Prester John, At the Article of Death, Politics and the May-Fly, A Reputation, A Journey of Little profit, At the Rising of the Waters, The Earlier Affection, The Black Fishers, Summer Weather, The Oasis in the Snow, The Herd of Stanlan, Streams of Water in the South, The Moor Song, Comedy in the Full Moon.
1902 The Watcher by the Threshold.
Containing: No Mans-Land, The Far Islands, The Watcher by the Threshold, The Outgoing of the Tide, Fountainblue.
1908 Some Eighteenth Century Byways.
Containing: Prince Charles Edward, Lady Louisa Stuart, Mr Secretary Murray, Lord Mansfield, Charles 11, The Making of Modern Scotland, Castlereagh, A Comic Chesterfield (the 11th Earl of Buchan), A Scottish Lady of the Old School (lady John Scott). The Victorian Chancellors, The First Lord Dudley, Mr Balfour as a Man of Letters, John Bunyan, Count Tolstoi and the Idealism of War, The Heroic Age of Ireland, Rabelais, Theodor Mommsen, The Apocalyptic Style.
1912 The Moon Endureth.
Containing: From the Pentlands Looking South and North (Verse), The Company of the Marjolaine, Avignon 1759 (Verse) , A Lucid Interval, The Shorter Catechism (Revised Version) (Verse), The Lemnian, Atta's Song (Verse), Space, Stocks and Stones (Verse), Streams of Water in the South, The Gipsy's Song to the Lady Cassilis(Verse), The Grove of Ashtaroth, Wood Magic (Verse), The Riding of Ninemileburn, Plain Folk(Verse) , The Kings of Orion, Babylon (Verse), The Green Glen, The Wise Years(Verse), The Rime of True Thomas.
1922 A Book of Escapes and Hurried Journeys.
Containing: The Flight to Varennes, The Railway Raid in Georgia, The Escape of King Charles after Worcester, From Pretoria to the Sea, The Escape of Prince Charles Edward, Two African Journeys, The Great Montrose, The Flight of lieutenants Parer and McIntosh across the World, Lord Nithsdale's Escape, Sir Robert Carey's Ride to Edinburgh, The Escape of princess Clemintina, On the Roof of the World.
1923 The Last Secrets.
Containing: Lhasa, The Gorges of the Bramaputra, The North Pole, The Mountains of the Moon, The South Pole, Mount Mckinley, The Holy Cities of Islam, The Exploration of New Guinea, Mount Everest.
1926 Homilies and Recreations.
Containing: Sir Walter Scott, The Old and the New in Literature, The Great Captains, The Muse of History, A Note on Edmund Burke, Lord Balfour and English Thought, Two Ordeals of Democracy, Literature and Topography, The Judical Temperament, Style and Journalism, Scot's Vernacular Poetry, Morris and Rossetti, Robert Burns, Catullus, The Literature of Tweeddale, Thoughts on a Distant Prospect of Oxford.
1928 The Rungates Club.
Containing: The Green Wildebeeste, The Frying-Pan and the Fire, Dr Lartius, The Wind in the Portico, "Divus" Johnston, The Loathly Opposite, Sing a Song of Sixpence, Ship to Tarshish, "Skule Skerry, Tendebant Manus, The Last Crusade, Fullcircle.
The short stories from Grey Weather, The Watcher by the Threshold, The Moon Endureth and The Runagates Club were colected into one volume titled The Watcher By The Threshold Shorter Scottish Fiction published in 1997 edited and expertly introduced by Andrew Lownie. This collection also includes the short story of Gideon Scott that had not previously been published and was found amongst Buchan papers in the National Library of Scotland. in this story Gideon Scott is the landlord of the Crook Inn in Tweedsmuir. Despite Buchan having walked and cycled past the doors of the Crook Inn many times he had never referred to it in his works previously. A 16 page booklet titled Gideon Scott was sponsored by the Crook Inn, Tweedsmuir in 2005.
Biographies.
Buchan may be best remembered for his novels but he also wrote ten biographies which were of great importance to him.
His biographies in chronological order of publication are as follows:-
1911 Sir Walter Raleigh.
1913 The Marquis of Montrose.
1913 Andrew Jameson, Lord Ardwall.
1920 Francis and Riversdale Grenfell.
1924 Lord Minto.
1928 Montrose.
1932 Sir Walter Scott.
1932 Julius Caesar.
1934 Gordon of Khartoum.
1934 Oliver Cromwell.
1937 Augustus.
1940 Autobiography. Memory Hold-the-Door.
The best known of the biographies is that of Montrose, which was first published in September 1928, reprinted three more times that year and has been reprinted many times since then. Buchan received in 1928 the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for this biography.
Buchan spent fifteen years researching Montrose and it is now considered to be the standard work on the life of Montrose.
Buchan had written a much shorter biography titled The Marquis of Montrose published in 1913, which was not a success and with which Buchan was obviously dissatisfied. This book was not reprinted at the time, however a paperback edition was published in 1996.
In 1929, the year following the publication of Montrose, Buchan wrote the novel Witch Wood which covers the same period of history. In his autobiography Memory Hold-the-Door, Buchan, when discussing his novels, "thought that Witch Wood was his best and thought that it was historically true because -- I could have documented almost every sentence from my researches on Montrose" Montrose indeed, makes a cameo appearance in Witch Wood.
Buchan dedicated Montrose to his brother Willie who died in 1912 while home on leave from India where he had been in the Civil Service. This dedication comprised of a poem written by Buchan - Fratri Dilectissimo - see Poetry section below.
Buchan was delighted to be asked to write the biography of Lord Ardwall, as Ardwall's son, John Jameson, had been a close friend at Oxford and this friendship had continued. Ardwall is in a beautiful part of Galloway and Buchan spent many holidays there before and after his marriage. He chose this area for the start of Richard Hannay's Scottish adventure in his novel The thirty-nine steps. It should be mentioned that very close to Ardwall is the family seat of the Clan Hannay.
The biography of the Grenfell twins Francis and Riversdale was largely done at the request of the Grenfell family which the Buchan family knew well. However, Captain Francis came into the news as he was one of the first Victoria Crosses awarded in WW1. Francis was in the 9th Lancers and he died heroically at the retreat from Mons in 1914. Francis is remembered in a Royal Mail WWI presentation pack of stamps issued for the centenary of the start of WWI in July 2014 - catalogue code AP392. The pack includes a portrait of Francis and paintings of the actions involving the 9th Lancers.
In 1924 Buchan was asked to assist with the biography of Lord Minto. Minto had been the Governor General of Canada 1899-1904. Buchan compiled the biography from Minto's notes and correspondence. This gave Buchan an insight into both Canadian politics and the qualities required for a good Governor General. This held him in good stead eleven years later when Buchan himself became Governor General of Canada.
The dedication at the beginning of Buchan's biography of Julius Caesar is to "Aircraftsman T. E. Shaw". This is Lt. Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence CB DSO (1888-1935) (Lawrence of Arabia). See Lawrence of Arabia page.
Buchan did not intend that Memory Hold-the-Door be his autobioigraphy. In the Preface he writes "The lover of gossip will find nothing to please him, for I have written at length only of the dead. Nor is it an autobiography, for I cannot believe that the external incidents of my life are important enough to be worth chronicling in detail." The title of the book is taken from the first verse of the poem Our Lady of the Snows by Robert L Stevenson.
Poetry
In 1898 Buchan at the third attempt gained the Newdigate prize for poetry. The poem that won the prize was titled The Pilrim Fathers which was prefaced by a short poem To The Adventurous Spirit of the North.
In 1917 Buchan published a book of poems titled Poems, Scots and English. This comprised of 28 of his poems of which half were in Scots and half in English. This book was dedicated to his brother Alastair, a 2nd. Lieutenant in the Royal Scots Fusiliers, who died of wounds after the Battle of Arras.
The iconic dedicatory poem in Montrose mentioned in the Biography section above can be read at Fratri Dilectissimo page.
In the book The Long Traverse, a childrens book published posthumously in 1941. Each chapters is followed by an epigraphical poem.
In 1996 John Buchan's Collected Poems was published which was co-edited by Andrew Lownie and William Milne.
Included in the above collection was a poem titled Ordeal by Marriage that was published in small numbers in 1916. This collection is the only collection where this title appears. The poem was reprinted as a stand alone publication in 2016.
John Buchan was an admirer of Robert Burns. Buchan's book of poems The Northern Muse - an anthology of Scots vernacular Poetry, first published in 1924, contains 58 poems by Burns out of a total of 245. This includes five verses and the chorus of Auld Lang Syne. Buchan did recognise it as something special as in his Commentary at the end of the book Buchan refers to "Burn's masterpiece, which throughout the world, has become the song of re-united friends. I have heard it sung in Dutch on a Boer farm on the Swaziland border." Buchan also included three of his own poems in the book.
Buchan wrote the Foreward for a ten volume work on The complete writings of Robert Burns published in 1927.
Buchan even mentions Burns in his novel The thirty-nine steps. Richard Hannay while being pursued over the moors of the Tweed Valley hills takes refuge in a shepherd's cottage where the wife gives Hannay a plaid. "when I left that cottage I was the living image of a kind of Scotsman you see in the illustrations to Burns's poems."
Buchan would have been delighted to know that two of his poems were included in the New Minstrelsy of The Scottish Borders published in 2006.
John Buchan's father The Rev. John Buchan (1847-1911) was also a poet and published a book in 1881 titled Tweedside Echos and Moorland Musings. Five of his poems were also included In Praise of Tweed by W.S. Crockett who was a long serving Minister of Tweedsmuir Kirk. Crockett in the biographical note about the Rev John Buchan in his book mentioned that "His son is the well-known author of Sir Quixote of the Moors, Scholar Gipsies, Musa Piscatriix, John Burnet of Barns, Grey Weather, etc."
Unified Editions.
The unified editions were of a standard size of 17cms x 11cms comprising 30 volumes. There were three different sets of Red Editions which had red covers. One set was quite plain the second set was differenced by having the top edge of the pages in gilt and a third set in addition to the gilt pages having the title of the book on the title page printed in red - of this latter set all editions were printed pre- WWII. In addition to the red editions there was a soft green leather covered edition. This had the gilt edged pages and also the red title on the title page and all editions were printed prior to WWII. Also all editions on the front outer cover had, blocked in gold, John Buchan's logo of his initials with a sunflower.
UNIFORM EDITIONS OF
MR JOHN BUCHAN’S WORKS PRINTED BY NELSON & SONS, EDINBURGH
Vols.
I GREENMANTLE
II PRESTER JOHN
III JOHN BURNET OF BARNS
IV THE WATCHER BY THE THRESHOLD
V A LOST LADY OF OLD YEARS
VI THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS;
and THE POWER HOUSE
VII SALUTE TO ADVENTURERS
VIII THE HALF-HEARTED
IX A LODGE IN THE WILDERNESS
X THE MOON ENDURETH
XI MR STANDFAST
XII SIR WALTER RALEIGH
XIII THE PATH OF THE KING
XIV HUNTINGTOWER
XV MIDWINTER
XVI THE THREE HOSTAGES
XVII JOHN MACNAB
XVIII THE DANCING FLOOR
XIX WITCHWOOD
XX THE RUNAGATES CLUB
XXI THE COURTS OF THE MORNING
XXII CASTLE GAY
XXIII THE BLANKET OF THE DARK
XXIV THE GAP IN THE CURTAIN
XXV A PRINCE OF THE CAPTIVITY
XXVI THE FREE FISHERS
XXVII JULIUS CAESAR
XXVIII POEMS SCOTS AND ENGLISH
XXIX THE HOUSE OF THE FOUR WINDS
XXX THE ISLAND OF SHEEP
For the full searchable bibliography of all John Buchan's published work I strongly suggest a visit to the John Buchan Society website http://www.johnbuchansociety.co.uk which is well worth visiting.
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