Description
Book SynopsisJohn MacDougall Hay (1881-1919) was born and brought up in Tarbert, Loch Fyne, where his father was a steamship agent. He went to the University of Glasgow in 1898 where he was a prize-winning scholar and made his first ventures into journalism while still a student.
After graduating in 1901 with an Arts degree, he trained as a teacher and worked at schools in Stornway and Ullapool. A serious bout of rheumatic fever weakened his health and led him to give up school-teaching as a career. In 1905 he returned to Glasgow to train as a minister of the Church of Scotland, once again supporting himself as a freelance journalist. When his divinity studies were completed in 1908, he became minister of Elderslie near Paisley. He married Catherine Campbell, who was herself a minister's daughter and their son (the Gaelic poet George Campbell Hay) was born in 1915.
MacDougall Hay continued to write, working in the evenings and revising his first novel Gillespie no fewer than t
Trade Review
J. MacDougall Hay has set a tragic tale, which, for sheer relentlessness, it would be difficult to find a parallel. * * The Times * *
... a sprawling masterpiece which thunders with truth and authenticity. * * Life and Work * *
... it is a mighty novel, demonstrating Hay's command of sensuous descriptive narrative and symbolism. * * The Scotsman * *
