Scottish Modernism, Kailyard Fiction and the Woman at Home

Abstract

In 1895, the critic J H Millar coined the term ‘Kailyard’.¹ Meaning cabbage patch or kitchen garden, it was used to deride the provincial outlook of a form of Scottish novel that gained in popularity during the 1880s, and topped new best-seller lists in Britain and North America in the 1890s.² Kailyard fiction by J M Barrie (1860–1937), S R Crockett (1859–1914), Ian Maclaren (1850–1907) and Annie S Swan (1859–1943) reflected with nostalgia on the piety, humility and contentment of Scottish rural families and communities. At a time when the decline of rural industries necessitated a relocation to urban centres and emigration for Highlanders, and in which political struggles for workers’ and women’s rights challenged traditional hierarchies, the Kailyard’s veneration of Christian values of forbearance and contentment with one’s lot suggest that the genre’s popularity lay in offering evasive fantasies and consolation to readers for whom such social harmony was by no means social reality.