Professor Alison Lumsden

Research Overview

Alison Lumsden's main research interests are Walter Scott, nineteenth-century Scottish fiction, Scottish women's writing and textual editing. She has published on Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson, Alasdair Gray, Nan Shepherd, Robert Burns  and Lewis Grassic Gibbon and is co-editor of Contemporary Scottish Women Writers (2000). She is also co-editor of Scott's The Pirate (2001), The Heart of Mid-Lothian (2004), Reliquiae Trotcosienses (2004), Woodstock (2009) and editor of Peveril of the Peak (2007) for the Edinburgh Edition. In 2010 she published a monograph entitled Walter Scott and the Limits of Language, which draws on her experiences of editing Scott to explore the creative potential generated by a concern with language that runs throughout his work. She is currently the principal investigator for a scholarly edition of Scott's poetry.  Alison Lumsden  is happy to supervise PhD theses on all aspects of nineteenth century Scottish writing, Scottish women's writing and textual editing. She particularly welcomes proposals on Walter Scott, James Hogg and Robert Louis Stevenson and is eager to supervise theses that draw on Aberdeen's outstanding collections of rare material in the Bernard C. Lloyd Walter Scott Collection.

Current Research

Alison Lumsden's main research project is a scholarly edition of Walter Scott's poetry, to be published in ten volumes over the next twelve years. A preliminary stage of this project was funded by the British Academy and the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland and the main editing work is now underway. The project will draw on the rich resources of the Bernard C.Lloyd Collection of Scott material at the University of Aberdeen and will bring together an international team of scholars.

Collaborations

The Walter Scott Research Centre has collaborated with the Universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh and Stirling to run a series of workshops on textual editing. It is also in partnership with the University of Edinburgh's SWINC group (Scottish Writing in the Nineteenth Century) and has participated in a number of seminars in collaboration with it. Seminars have been held on Civic and Secret Scotland and talks on textual editing have been given at the National Library of Scotland in the series 'What are you Reading?' Alison Lumsden also collaborated with SWINC on a 'Writing the North' parternship, which brought writers from Orkney and Shetland together with academics in a creative partnership. As Honorary Librarian of Scott's library at Abbotsford she also works in partnership with Abbotsford and the Faculty of Advocates to take forward projects related to the collections.

Research Funding and Grants

Alison Lumsden received grants from the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland and the British Academy for work on a preliminary investigation into editing Walter Scott's poetry. the poetry is now supported by a privated donation and other sources of funding are being sought.