5 December 2006

New book reveals life of Dundee maverick

The fascinating life of a maverick Dundonian is the subject of a new book from Dundee University Press.

George Gilfillan (1813-1878) was a local clergyman, who achieved celebrity as a controversialist and leading light in Scottish religious and cultural life in the mid-Victorian era. Throughout Scotland he was an influential and charismatic preacher, campaigner for religious and political progress, commentator on the Scottish heritage and the literary scene, Gilfillan was revered by his audiences and readers and became a patron of many working class poets.

Gilfillan of Dundee, written by Aileen Black, has taken five years of research and is the first, full-length study, based on academic research, which deals with all aspects of Gilfillan’s career in Victorian Dundee and the wider context.

Aileen Black says, ‘George Gilfillan’s life was a great topic for research, because it enabled me to pursue my own interests in Victorian religious and literary history. He was a fascinating, if flawed, character, full of contradictions - a minister who wanted to be taken seriously as a ‘man of letters’. His personal journey from Calvinism to liberal churchman, literary career and his brushes with famous people (like Thomas Carlyle) are full of incident and worth studying for their own sake. Gilfillan’s history is also significant, because it offers insights into the religious life in Dundee, the importance of sermons and the press for working people and how ideas about the great issues of the day - American slavery, electoral reform, science and biblical criticism - were popularised’.

The book is available for order from all good bookshops, or direct from Dundee University Press - Telephone: (01382) 385562.

E-mail: dup@dundee.ac.uk

Internet: www.dup.dundee.ac.uk

Aileen Black is available for interviews.

For media enquiries contact:

Anna Day
Press Office
University of Dundee
Nethergate Dundee, DD1 4HN
TEL: 01382 384768
E-MAIL: a.c.day@dundee.ac.uk