In 1938 John Lorne Campbell bought the Hebridean isle of Canna. He wanted to prevent it becoming a rich man's playground (like so many other islands and Highland estates), to preserve a part of traditional Gaelic culture and show that efficient farming methods could be compatible with wildlife conservation and sustainability. But his determination to get the island left him burdened by debt, and even after he gave it to the National Trust for Scotland in 1981 he still had to fight to secure his legacy. This acclaimed book is an insightful and human portrait of one of the twentieth century's most significant scholars of the Gaelic world, and of his 60-year partnership with Margaret Fay Shaw, who together created the world-famous library of Gaelic song and other material at Canna House.

Margaret Fay Shaw's life spans a century of change. Orphaned at 11 she left home and school in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia aged 16, crossing to Scotland to spend a year at school near Glasgow. It was there that her love for Scotland was born. After studying music in New York and Paris, she returned to live for six years with two sisters in South Uist. Life on the island had changed little from previous centuries, and material comforts were few. But the island was rich in music and tradition, and Margaret Fay Shaw's collection of Gaelic lore and song are amongst the most important made this century, whilst her photography evocatively captures the aura of a vanished world. Her autobiography is the remarkable testament of a remarkable woman as well as a powerful plea in defence of a Gaelic culture and world under threat. It is written with a sharpness of observation, directness of humour and zest for life which make it a marvellous record of the twentieth century.

This volume offers a ground-breaking investigation into women's contribution to the description, analysis, and codification of languages across a wide range of linguistic and cultural traditions. The chapters explore a variety of spheres of activity, from the production of dictionaries and grammars to language teaching methods and language policy.

Tomás Bairéad is regarded as one of the finest short–story writers in Irish of the twentieth-century. His memoir recounts his youth on a small farm in an isolated region of the west of Ireland, one of the last “Gaeltachtaí” or Irish-speaking districts. An active member of the Irish Volunteers in his area and a talented writer of both Irish and English, Bairéad was part of the first-generation of Irish people who made their living as journalists in the newly-independent Irish Republic. His memories of working as a newspaper-man in the Irish capital, Dublin, make for fascinating reading, as do the coterie of Nationalist activists and intellectuals with whom he associated, including renowned writers such as Liam O’Flaherty, Máirtín Ó Cadhain and Pádraic Ó Conaire, to name but a few.