The period from 1650 to 1800 was a time of immense change in Scotland, witnessing the Union of 1707, the Jacobite Risings, and the flowering of the Scottish Enlightenment, alongside religious, economic, and social upheavals. This International Companion shows how Scotland's literary cultures, in English, Gaelic, Latin, and Scots, were transformed.

The period from 1650 to 1800 encompasses the Restoration, the 1688 Revolution, the failure of the Company of Scotland's Darien colony, the 1707 Acts of Union, the Jacobite Risings of 1715 and 1745, and the emergence of the new British Empire as a global superpower. It also witnessed religious, economic, and social upheavals, the beginnings of industrialisation, and the start of the Clearances, as well as the astonishing efflorescence of intellectual activity known as the Scottish Enlightenment. This International Companion offers new perspectives on how the long eighteenth century transformed Scotland's literary cultures - both high and low, dominant and marginalised - in English, Gaelic, Latin, and Scots.