Scottish comic strip character OOR WULLIE was as popular as Harry Potter for a generation of Scots who favoured his adventures over Sir Walter Scott and Robert Burns, a new exhibition reveals.
An Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded project at Edinburgh Napier University has explored the reading habits of Scots born on or before 1945 and they found that the popularity of Oor Wullie, The Broons and other comics produced by Dundee’s D.C. Thomson dwarfed that of the traditional Scottish literary canon.
The three-year Scottish Readers Remember project was funded by the AHRC and the Carnegie Trust and was led by Professor Alistair McCleery, Director of the Scottish Centre for the Book. She said that “Almost all the interviewees we spoke to said Oor Wullie and The Broons was a key part of their reading experience, whether in The Sunday Post or the Christmas annuals”.
“Their adventures were keenly read and enjoyed by children, parents and grandparents and, in many respects, Oor Wullie was very much like Harry Potter for that generation of Scots.”
Interviews were conducted from Govan to Shetland as well as with ex-pats in New Zealand and Canada, with many of the interviewees in their 90s.
“Books were the predominant leisure medium for that generation, and the titles that came up time and time again particularly related to their childhood reading,” said Professor McCleery.
“However much they were aware of writers such as Sir Walter Scott and Robert Burns, they were associated with the dull but worthy set texts of education or rituals of Burns Night rather than something to be read for pleasure or entertainment.”
A month-long exhibition of the project’s wider findings was officially opened at Edinburgh’s Central Library on September 1 and it will go on to tour Scotland’s libraries.
The exhibition includes a chance to listen to excerpts from some of the 80 interviews recorded as part of the project.
Further information is available at: http://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/directory_record/5079/central_library
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AHRC Media contact: Jake Gilmore, Communications Manager, 01793 416021; j.gilmore@ahrc.ac.uk
Notes to Editors:
The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC): Each year the AHRC provides approximately £100 million from the Government to support research and postgraduate study in the arts and humanities, from languages and law, archaeology and English literature to design and creative and performing arts. In any one year, the AHRC makes hundreds of research awards ranging from individual fellowships to major collaborative projects as well as over 1,100 studentship awards. Awards are made after a rigorous peer review process, to ensure that only applications of the highest quality are funded. The quality and range of research supported by this investment of public funds not only provides social and cultural benefits but also contributes to the economic success of the UK.
Scottish Readers Remember : The Scottish Readers Remember project has examined an aspect of book history that to date, has been less well documented in Scotland – that of reception. The relationship Scots have had with the printed word over the course of the twentieth century was the impetus for this exploration, which has as its centre an oral history study. That testimony from eighty interviewees has provided the first focused attempt to analyse the changing tastes and habits of Scottish readers from diverse parts of the country and different social backgrounds. A further consideration of the analysis has been the contribution that reading practices have had on a sense of collective identity. This major project is making an important contribution to the cultural history of modern Scotland. In addition, the study has made a specifically Scottish contribution to the internationally established field of the history of reading reception.