The Glorious Thing

Christine Orr’s forgotten classic The Glorious Thing has been published by MSc Publishing students.

All proceeds  are being donated to Poppyscotland
and Scottish Veterans Residences.

The students published under the imprint Merchiston Publishing – the in-house publishing arm of the Scottish Centre for the Book, based at Edinburgh Napier University.

Orr’s The Glorious Thing is set on the home front in Edinburgh.

Often funny, sometimes tragic, this thought-provoking and evocative novel, written by Christine Orr when she was only 19, is set in Edinburgh during the First World War.

First published in 1919, this beautiful new edition provides a revealing snapshot of ordinary Edinburgh lives during an extraordinary time.

It is a coming of age novel, a bildungsroman, based around our heroine Marion Sutherland and her struggle to find a place in a rapidly changing society. It explores the moral and social implications of the First World War on the day-to-day lives of the city’s residents. The main focus is on the changing roles of women and how they navigate their way through this difficult time.

Often funny, sometimes tragic, this beautifully written work gives the reader an eye-opening account of life in wartime Edinburgh.

Our new edition hopes to bring this forgotten work to the forefront of Scottish literature. The Glorious Thing will place Christine Orr where she fully deserves to be – an important contributor to the Scottish Renaissance of the early twentieth century.

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The book costs £5 and all proceeds  are being donated to Poppyscotland and Scottish Veterans Residences. Staff and students on all campuses can promise £5 and a copy of The Glorious Thing will be delivered to them. (The £5 donation will be collected on the book’s delivery.) Email to order.