Overview

Mary Queen of Scots (1542-1587) was active as monarch of Scotland for just six years between 1561 and 1567, but her impact as a ruler in Scotland is much less important than her subsequent role in popular culture and imagination. Her story has enjoyed perpetual retelling and reached a global audience over the past four and a half centuries. This collection surveys the exceptionally varied range of objects, literature, art and media that have been produced to commemorate Mary between her own time and the present day. Why is her story so enduring, pervasive, and of such interest to so many different audiences? How have the narratives associated with these objects evolved in response to shifting cultural attitudes? The collection offers a much-needed novel perspective on the Queen of Scots, using an approach at the intersection of early modern, gender and cultural history, museum and heritage studies, and memory studies.

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9781399523530

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Reviews

This fascinating collection of essays forensically uncovers the biases of texts and the myths surrounding material objects that are part of the afterlife of Mary Queen of Scots and have contributed to her memorialisation over time. This is a wide-ranging and 'must-read' book, for historians, curators and Marian enthusiasts. --Susan Doran, University of Oxford This is the most significant contribution to the study of Mary, Queen of Scots in a generation. Nineteen sparkling chapters, from an array of disciplinary angles, carry us on an enthralling journey through the contested cultural afterlives of Mary via material survivals, visual, literary and cinematic representations. --Sandy Wilkinson, University College Dublin

Author Information

Steven J. Reid is Professor of Early Modern Scottish History and Culture at the University of Glasgow. He has published widely on intellectual, religious and political culture in the reigns of Mary, Queen of Scots and James VI and I. His books include Humanism and Calvinism (Ashgate, 2011), which won the Senior Hume Brown Prize in Scottish History, and The Early Life of James: A Long Apprenticeship 1566-1585 (Birlinn, 2023).

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