Book description
The Silver Darlings is a tale of lives hard won from a cruel sea
and crueller landlords. It tells of strong young men and stronger
women whose loves, fears and sorrows are set deep in a landscape of
raw beauty and bleak reward. The dawning of the Herring Fisheries
brought with it the hope of escape from the brutality of the Highland
Clearances, and Neil Gunn's story paints a vivid picture of a
community fighting against nature and history and refusing to be crushed.
Neil Miller Gunn (1891-173) was a novelist, critic and dramatist, one
of the most influential Scottish writers of the first half of the 20th
century. He was born in the village of Dunbeath in the county of
Caithness, the northernmost county of mainland Scotland. His father was
the captain of a herring boat, and Gunn's preoccupation with the sea and
fishermen can be traced directly back to his childhood memories of his
father's work. He began his working life as a Customs and Excise
Officer, and turned to full time writing after he was awarded the 1937
James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Highland River. He continued to
write prolifically both as novelist and essayist throughout his life.
