Information Services

Fred Urquhart Papers

Edinburgh University Library’s Fred Urquhart Papers (Coll-49) include working materials for most of his major publications, many unpublished manuscripts, and correspondence with other Scottish writers.

They include manuscripts for over 100 short stories as well as for novels, plays, poems, essays, and works edited by Urquhart. There are numerous book reports for publishers and literary agents, and reviews for literary magazines. More personal papers include diaries detailing Urquhart's reading and theatre-going experiences and providing insights into his private life. Many other major Scottish writers are discussed in the reports, reviews, and diary entries, including George Mackay Brown, Lewis Grass Gibbon, Neil M. Gunn, Maurice Lindsay, Hugh MacDiarmid, Compton Mackenzie, Naomi Mitchison, and Edwin Muir.

Together with extensive professional and family correspondence, the Urquhart Papers also include letters from important Scottish contemporaries such as George Mackay Brown, Neil M. Gunn, Maurice Lindsay, Alexander Reid, and William Soutar, together with other literary figures such as H. E. Bates and Rhys Davies.

The Urquhart Papers are an invaluable resource, not only for Urquhart scholars but also for any researcher with an interest in the Scottish short story, the novel of the Scottish Renaissance, Scottish gay writing, Scotland in the Second World War, postwar British publishing, or relations between some of Scotland's major writers.

Explore the Collection

Fred Urquhart Materials in Other EUL Collections

Materials of Urquhart interest in other EUL collections include letters to Maurice Lindsay and Robert Nye, a review by Norman MacCaig, and references to Urquhart in letters to Hugh MacDiarmid from Lindsay, John MacNair Reid, and William Soutar.