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Sir J M Barrie
Novelist & Dramatist, 1860-1937
James Matthew Barrie was born in Kirriemuir (Forfarshire), the "Thrums" of his fiction, on 9th May 1860, the seventh surviving child of a hand-loom weaver. Educated at Glasgow Academy, Forfar Academy and Dumfries Academy, he took his MA at Edinburgh University. He worked as a journalist for the Nottingham Journal before moving to London in 1885 to freelance. Barrie's dramatised adaptation of The Little Minister was enormously successful, persuading him to write increasingly for the stage. Notable among his early plays are Quality Street (1902), The Admirable Crichton (1902) and What Every Woman Knows (1908). Out of stories he spun for the Davies boys came the material for Peter Pan (1904), probably the most famous children's play ever written. His later plays include Dear Brutus (1917), Mary Rose (1920), and The Boy David (1936). A final work of fiction, the ghost-story Farewell Miss Julie Logan, appeared in The Times in 1931. Barrie died on 19th June, 1937.

Robert Burns
Poet, 1759-1796
Burns was born at Alloway near Ayr on 25th January 1759, the eldest of a family of seven born to William and Agnes Burnes. The Burnes family hailed from Kincardineshire, but William had moved south in the aftermath of the Jacobite rebellion, first to Edinburgh and then to Ayrshire. In the autumn of 1774 Burns wrote his first song "Handsome Nell." Deciding to emigrate to Jamaica, Burns cast about for some way of raising funds and decided to publish his poems. Poems, chiefly in the Scottish dialect appeared at Kilmarnock in July 1786. Encouraged by favourable acclaim, Burns abandoned his plans to emigrate. In November he published a second and much larger edition in April 1787. Burns's reputation as a poet rests largely on the Kilmarnock Edition of 1786 although his great comic masterpiece "Tam o' Shanter" was written in 1790. From 1787 onwards, Burns tended to concentrate on songs of Scotland, writing new verses in many cases. Today Burns is ranked among the leading world poets of all time. His poems include "A Man's a Man for A' That," "To a Mouse," "Auld Lang Syne," "A Red, Red Rose," and "My Heart's in the Highlands."

Thomas Carlyle
Historian, Essayist & Critic, 1795-1881
Thomas Carlyle was born in Ecclefechan on 5th December 1795, son of a hard-working and pious stonemason. Edinburgh University followed local schools; rapidly losing any ambition for the Church Carlyle tried school teaching, translation, scientific writing, tutoring, the law - slowly working his way to modest success as essayist, translator, biographer, and by the late 1820's to public notice as author of important essays "Signs of the Times," "Characteristics," and an astonishing early work, Sartor Resartus in which Carlyle anticipates many features of twentieth century writing, stripping off the rotting fabric of belief in his own age, and calling for a radical re-think and renewal.His effect on contemporary writers was extraordinary - Dickens, Thackeray, Eliot, Disraeli all could not have written as they did without his example.

Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle
Short story writer, Novelist, Journalist & Doctor, 1859-1930
Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh, 22nd May 1859 and educated locally and by the Jesuits at Stonyhurst College. Doyle graduated from Edinburgh University in medicine in 1881. A crude, unpublished story from this time shows him experimenting with two lead characters, a daring master of arcane scientific perceptions and a down-to-earth narrator inviting audience identification, but it was not until 1886 that the ultimate development of the two types came to life in A Study in Scarlet, as the consulting detective Sherlock Holmes and his fellow-lodger Dr Watson. Their brilliant, ironic, infectious dialogue, to be continued over fifty six short stories and four novels in all. In the eight years between The Final Problem and The Hound of the Baskervilles, Doyle also wrote a series of historical short stories about the exploits of the Napoleonic soldier, Etienne Gerard.

Alistair MacLean
Novelist, 1922-1987
MacLean was born in Glasgow in 1922 and spent his early years in Daviot near Inverness. Educated at Hillhead High School, Glasgow, he worked in a shipping office before joining the Royal Navy at the outbreak of the Second World War. At the age of 32 he entered a short story competition in The Glasgow herald, which he won with a story entitled "The Dileas." Ian Chapman, an editor with Collins, was so impressed by the story he asked MacLean to attempt a novel. He received the manuscript of HMS Ulysses ten weeks later. The novel became one of the most successful British novels of all time, selling 250,000 hardback copies within six months. This success was followed by Guns of Navarone, and South by Java Head, both of which later became films. In the mid 1960s, MacLean turned his hand to screenplays such as Where Eagles Dare. Throughout his career he produced twenty seven books, mainly adventure stories, but he also wrote a biography of Captain Cook in 1972.

Ian Rankin
Novelist, 1960 -
Rankin was born in Cardenden, Fife, Scotland in 1960 and attended local comprehensive school, then went on to University of Edinburgh. He received an MA in English Literature (specialising in US Literature). He then started studying towards a PhD in the Modern Scottish Novel, but began writing witing his own novels instead. Rankin's short story, "The Flood," was developed into his first novel. Rankin was elected a Hawthornden Fellow in 1988 and won several awards including the Chandler-Fullbright Award in 1992, CWA Short Story Dagger in 1994 and in 1996. HIs most widely read novels include the detective John Rebus, including Resurrection Men (2002), Rebus: The St Leonard's Years (2001) The Falls (2001), Set in Darkness (2000), Rebus: The Early Years, The Hanging Garden (1998), Black and Blue (1997), Let it Bleed (1996), Mortal Causes (1994), and The Black Book (1993.)

J. K. Rowling
Novelist, 1965 -
Biography - J.K. Rowling
J.K. Rowling was born in Chepstow, Gwent in 1965, and her full name is Joanne Kathleen Rowling. Her writing career started at the age of six when she wrote a story called "Rabbit." Since then she has graduated from Exeter, worked as a teacher and been an unemployed single parent. Divorced and living on public assistance she wrote Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone at a table in a café during her daughters naps. When Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was bought and published by Bloomsbury in 1997 her life changed dramatically, the Harry Potter series has since then won numerous awards and become a tremendous success around the world.

Sir Walter Scott
Novelist & Poet, 1771-1832
Walter Scott was born on 15th August 1771 in the Old Town of Edinburgh. His earliest major success was in poetry: "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" (1805), "Marmion" (1808) and "The Lady of the Lake" (1810). His poetry (which was widely translated and imitated) set in people's minds an idea of Scotland still hard to dislodge. He wrote "Waverley" (1814), a tour de force which catapulted historical fiction into public consciousness and popularity, and made Scott world famous again, this time as the anonymous (though it was an open secret) "Author of Waverley". His successful novels and poems included Ivanhoe: A Romance (1791), The Antiquary (1816), Rob Roy (1818), The Heart of Midlothian (1818) and "Redgauntlet" (1824). For the six remaining years of his life, he produced a torrent of work, fiction and critical prose, including The Chronicles of the Canongate, which included "The Fair Maid of Perth" (1828).

Robert Louis Stevenson
Poet, Novelist & Essayist, 1850-1894
Stevenson grew up in Edinburgh, and this profoundly shaped his writing. He began with essays and travel writing and within a few years was recognised as a writer of great promise. His first commercially published book, An Inland Voyage, (1878) described a canoe trip in Belgium and France. In 1877, Treasure Island was serialised and was published in volume form in 1883. He did not become popular until 1886, with the publication of Kidnapped and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the first gaining critical esteem, the second a best-seller which made his reputation on both sides of the Atlantic. Stevenson examined some of the extreme and contrary currents of Scotland's past in such novels as Kidnapped and The Master of Ballantrae (1888), often projecting a dualism of both personality and belief. As a poet Stevenson tends to be best remembered as the author of A Child's Garden of Verses (1885). Stevenson also wrote lyric, comic and narrative poems in both Scots and English, published in Underwoods (1887) and Ballads (1890).

Nigel Tranter
Novelist, 1909 - 2000
From 1935 to 2000 Nigel Tranter wrote over 140 books including his famous Scottish historical novels, factual books about Scotland and the Scots, novels set in Scotland, and other countries, westerns, under a pseudonym, and a series of books for children. Nigel Tranter not only published more books than any other Scot but no one even comes close to having as many books currently in print, certainly the acid test of popularity. His many works include Big Corral, Trail Herd, Rancher Renegade, MacGregor's Gathering, Lord and Master, Silver Island, Land of the Scots, Black Douglas, Robert The Bruce Vol 1 - 5, The Wallace, Argyll and Bute, MacBeth the King, Portrait of the Lothians, Margaret the Queen, Lord of the Isles, Unicorn Rampant, James by the Grace of God, Scotland of Robert the Bruce, Crusader, Druid Sacrifice, Tapestry of the Boar, Price of a Princess, High Kings and Vikings, and A Flame for the Fire.

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