Sketches of Early Scottish Social Life. By Professor C. Innes. Contents: 1. On the Old Scotch Law of Marriage and Divorce. 2. A Sketch of the State of Society before and immediately after the Reformation in Scotland. 3. A Chapter on Old Scotch Topography and Statistics.
Scotland in the Middle Ages. Sketches of Early Scotch History and Social Progress. By Professor C. Innes. With Maps Illustrative of the Civil and Ecclesiastical Divisions in the Tenth and Thirteenth Centuries. 8vo, cloth, 10s. 6d.
“All who wish to learn what early Scotland really was, will prize it highly.”—Scotsman, January 7.
“The students of the Edinburgh University have reason to be congratulated on the qualities of their Professor of History, and the general public ought to be thankful for this volume.” . . . “More of real history may here be learned in a few hours than from some more pretentious works in as many weeks; and, what is still better, ingenuous youth, if ingenuous indeed, will here take a noble enthusiasm, which will stimulate to long, laborious, and delightful research.”—Dial, November 9.
Sketches of Early Scotch History. By Cosmo Innes, F.S.A., Professor of History in the University of Edinburgh. 1. The Church; its Old Organisation, Parochial and Monastic. 2. Universities. 3. Family History. In one vol., 8vo, price 16s.
“It is since Scottish writers have abandoned the search of a lost political history, have dropped their enthusiasm for a timid and turbulent ecclesiastical history, and have been content to depict the domestic annals of the people, to enter their shops and their houses, to follow them in the streets and the fields, and to record their everyday life—their eating and their drinking, their dress, their pleasures, their marriages, their wealth and their science—that Scottish history has become an enticing study. . . . In this new path none has been more active than Mr. Cosmo Innes.”—Times, April 3.
“This is a valuable collection of materials, from which future historians of Scotland may extract a solid basis for many portions of their work. . . . This recapitulation of the contents of the volume before us shews that it is a treasury of valuable documents, from which may be framed a better domestic history of Scotland during the middle ages than we yet possess. It reveals many inner characteristics of a shrewd, enterprising yet cautious people, as they were floating down the stream of time to blend with their co-civic races in an amicable fusion of political interests.”—Morning Post, April 8.
“Mr. Innes, who is favourably known to us as the author of a work entitled ’Scotland in the Middle Ages,’ has attempted, in his ’Sketches of Early Scotch History,’ to open up the still tangled wild of his country’s annals, down to a later period, joining modern thought and customs to mediæval beliefs and usages. . . . Of the home life in Scotland, Mr. Innes gives us some very attractive notices, passing in review no less than four collections of family documents—the Morton, the Breadalbane, the Cawdor, and the Kilravock papers. Abounding, as these papers do, in social illustrations, and sketching, as they do, the character and spirit of the age, the condition and customs of the people, they cannot fail to instruct and entertain. Touches of reality, pleasant bits of gossip, records of wind and weather, household doings and sayings, are all to be found scattered over these family papers.”—Spectator, April 6.
. . . “The length of our quotations prevents us from dwelling on the encomiums this work so really deserves. The charms of literary composition are hardly expected in antiquarian researches. Knowledge and judgment are more looked for, but how well Mr. Innes has combined acumen with the power of investing his subject with interest, the most casual inspection will prove. He has added an important volume to the literature of his country, and doubtless will have many followers in a branch of authorship which is at once instructive and amusing.”—Glasgow Courier, March 28.