The Highlands & Islands: A Scottish History

Grab your favorite e-reader and dive into a digital copy of a classic Scottish history text. One of the County Argyle editions in our digital library.

The Highlands & Islands of Scotland

Painter William Smith was a popular post-Victorian artist who specialized in bucolic scenes of daily life in the British isles. In 1906, he partnered with author Ascott Moncrieff on The Highlands & Islands of Scotland. This popular work features a series of travelogue-styled vignettes of life around western Scotland circa 1900. It offers a fascinating first-hand look at life in the cities and countryside of turn-of-the-century Caledonia.

From the book’s preface:

In Bonnie Scotland was promised a further volume that should be devoted to the sterner and wilder aspects of Caledonia. That book dealt with the main body of Highlands and Lowlands, more familiar to the gentle tourist for whose patronage it was a candidate. This one, whose title might have been qualified as West Highlands, deals with the less visited side that is still Highland indeed, both in ruder natural features and in a life holding out longer against the trimming and taming of Sassenach intromissions.

The author, as before, tries to weave a pattern of entertaining stripes and checks upon a groundwork of information, all making a darker-hued tartan than is worn in the centre of Bonnie Scotland. He has prepared a brisk, perhaps frothy, but it is hoped, not unpalatable, brew of “heather ale,” which contains in solution more solid ingredients than may be manifest to every reader.

Format: A digital download for Kindle, iPad or Nook.

Shipping: Digital copies arrive via email, usually within a few minutes of purchase.

The Digital Library

This digital (ebook) copy of the pair’s work includes the complete text and artwork of the original. This rare antiquarian book of Scottish history is a digital reprint of the 1906 edition. Due to the age of the original, imperfections — marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages — may occur. If you have any questions about your book, please contact us.