Beyond Outlander: Annie S. Swan and the Scottish Popular Romance Novel

Abstract:Annie S. Swan has become recognised as one of the most significant Scottish women authors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. However, her twentieth-century works remain largely understudied and dismissed due to their critical perception as simply 'slushy women's romances' (Sutherland). Such a view overlooks the potential importance of Swan's writing in this period for the development of the Scottish popular romance novel. A subgenre that has enjoyed increasing attention and success in recent years, the origins of the modern Scottish romance novel are generally traced to Gabaldon's Outlander (1991) and imitators in the 1990s and 2000s by authors like Terri Brisbin, Julie Garwood, and Lyndsay Sands. However, as I will argue in this article, Swan's twentieth-century works display several of the structures and motifs that are definitional for what we now term Scottish popular romance fiction. The article traces the shifting structures of Swan's twentieth-century writings, as well as her representation of Scotland as primitive, magical, and romantic, showing similarities between 1990s and 2000s Scottish romance and selected works of Swan from the 1910s to 1940s. Ultimately, the article argues that Swan's twentieth-century works can be classified as part of a longer tradition of Scottish popular romance fiction and that, rather than dismissing her 'slushy women's romances', we reposition her as an early writer of Scottish popular romance fiction.