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Early in Orcadia
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| Naomi Mitchison. With an Introduction by Moira Burgess, and a Review by Isobel Murray |
| ISBN 9781849210591 |
| SERIES The Naomi Mitchison Library |
| Paperback 170 pages |
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| Published 4 June 2021
UK Price £12.95
US Price $20.00 |
Early in Orcadia was first published in 1987, and consists of five stories, set hundreds of years apart in time and dealing with different characters, but connected by their location in a particular corner of Orkney during the period known as the Stone Age.
Mitchison links them formally by interpolating passages of fact and explanation between the fictional episodes, and by speculating in her own voice about what happened in prehistory, as far as it can be known from archaeological research, and how it fits in with the world of today.
The slightly awkward jumps from one story to the next indicate that the development of the human race was not a completely smooth and seamless process.
There must have been significant moments when a highly important discovery or invention took place.
The structure of the book is demonstrating its theme - that there are sudden advances but just one story running from the earliest times to the present day, and it is the story of humankind.
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Naomi Mitchison [1897-1999] was a literary phenomenon.
Tireless in her writing, unafraid and often highly unconventional in her opinions, she left an extraordinary legacy.
Her novels for adults and children - based on the classical ancient world, and on the immediately contemporary - stressed at different times her deep interest in Scottish and African societies, as well her concerns for the future.
She also wrote poetry and plays, memoirs, a war diary, book reviews, political articles, and many letters.
Moira Burgess is a novelist, short story writer and literary historian who lives in Glasgow. She is the author of Mitchison's Ghosts (Humming Earth, 2008), on supernatural and mythical elements in the writing of Naomi Mitchison, and is Editor of a collected edition of Mitchison's Essays and Journalism being published by Kennedy & Boyd.
Isobel Murray is a Scottish literary scholar, Emeritus Professor at the University of Aberdeen. She has edited the work of Oscar Wilde and Naomi Mitchison, and a series of interviews which she and her husband Bob Tait carried out with Scottish writers.
Her biography of Jessie Kesson (2000) won the National Library of Scotland / Saltire Society Scottish Research Book of the Year award.
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© Kennedy & Boyd, an imprint of Zeticula Ltd., Unit 13, 196 Rose Street, Edinburgh, EH2 4AT, Scotland
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