Annals of the Parish

More about the book

This volume combines three of the novels which made John Galt's reputation: Annals of the Parish, The Provost, and The Ayrshire Legatees. While they offer entertaining satires of village life in Ayrshire in the 1820s, they are far more than exercises in nostalgia for a simpler, rural past. The period they deal with was one of turbulent change in the agricultural, industrial and social life of Scotland, bringing threats to the traditional way of life of the people in general, and churchmen and local politicians in particular. Galt's concerns are the very modern ones of new technology and urbanisation and, behind the tranquil facade, he shows the old ways bending under the strain.