![]() ![]() ![]() Dictated from his sick-bed to his cousin, Robert Campbell (already establishing a possible gulf between ‘texts’ – the one Kirk orally related, and the one written down by Campbell) the Secret Commonwealth (as it became known, although its actual title varies from MS to MS) was not published until 1815 by Sir Walter Scott. As a novelist I needed ‘telling details’ to bring him alive on the page as a fully-rounded character as a researcher I was aware of the unreliable accuracy of the various printed versions of the monograph. In researching my novel, The Knowing – A Fantasy (the main iteration of my Creative Writing PhD at the University of Leicester), I undertook extensive primary source research of the novel’s historical focus: Robert Kirk, the 17 th Century Episcopalian minister of Aberfoyle best known for his 1691 monograph, The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies. ![]() Photograph by Kevan Manwaring 2015 (with permission of the Edinburgh University Library Special Collections). ![]()
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