Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
11
Mansfield Place Church
CHURCH
In complete contrast to the austerity of most of Edinburgh's religious buildings, this 19th-
century, neo- Romanesque church contains a remarkable series of Renaissance-style fres-
coes painted in the 1890s by Irish-born artist Phoebe Anna Traquair (1852-1936). The
murals have been restored and are on view to the public (check the website for any
changes to viewing times).
(
www.mansfieldtraquair.org.uk
;
Mansfield Pl; admission free;
1-4pm 2nd Sun of the month, 11am-1pm Sun-Thu during Edinburgh Festival Fringe;
8)
Understand
Literary Edinburgh
Sir Walter Scott
The writer most deeply associated with Edinburgh is undoubtedly Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832),
Scotland's greatest and most prolific novelist, best remembered for classic tales such as
The Anti-
quary, The Heart of Midlothian, Ivanhoe, Redgauntlet
and
Castle Dangerous
. The son of an Ed-
inburgh lawyer, he lived at various New Town addresses before moving to his country house at
Abbotsford.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Another Edinburgh novelist with an international reputation, Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94)
was born at 8 Howard Pl, in the New Town, into a family of famous lighthouse engineers.
Stevenson is known and loved around the world for stories such as
Kidnapped
,
Catriona
,
Treas-
ure Island, The Master of Ballantrae
and
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
, many of
which have been made into successful films. The most popular and enduring is
Treasure Island
(1883), which has been translated into many different languages and has never been out of print.
Muriel Spark
No list of Edinburgh novelists would be complete without mention of Dame Muriel Spark
(1918-2006), who was born in Edinburgh and educated at James Gillespie's High School for
Girls, an experience that provided material for her best-known novel
The Prime of Miss Jean
Brodie
(1961), a shrewd portrait of 1930s Edinburgh. Dame Muriel was a prolific writer; her
22nd novel,
The Finishing School
, was published in 2004 when she was 86.
