Cairns Craig

Robert Cairns Craig (16 February 1949 – 29 July 2026) was a Scottish literary scholar, specialising in Scottish and modernist literature. He was Glucksman Professor of Irish and Scottish Studies and director of the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen from 2005 to 2023, then he was professor emeritus there. Before that, he had taught at the University of Edinburgh, serving as head of the English literature department from 1997 to 2003, and as deputy director of The Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities from 1998 to 2005. He was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 2005.

Life and work Craig was awarded a PhD from the University of Edinburgh in 1978 for his thesis W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot and the Associationist Aesthetic.

He published on authors including W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Iain Banks, and Muriel Spark.

His 1984 book on Yeats, Eliot, and Pound was described by Seamus Deane as lacking a little clarity, panache and focus, but offering an "engrossing" exploration of the relationship between modernism and reactionary politics, which he links via memory, and particularly Archibald Alison's theory of associationism; Deane called it "a complicated story, illustrated by Craig with such well-chosen and well-timed quotations that it is difficult to resist."

The Modern Scottish Novel: Narrative and the National Imagination (1999) brought a "modern, inclusive, skeptical intelligence" to the question of Scottish literature.

Craig was general editor of the four-volume series History of Scottish Literature (published 1987-89).

He was also involved as editor or publisher with magazines including Cencrastus, Edinburgh Review and Radical Scotland.

Craig relaunched the Aberdeen University Press (est. in 1900) in 2013.

Craig died in Aberdour on 29 July 2026, aged 77.

Publications The Body in the Kit Bag: History and the Scottish Novel, in Cencrastus No. 1, Autumn 1979, pp. 18 – 22, Fearful Selves: Character, Community and the Scottish Imagination, in Cencrastus No. 4, Winter 1980-81, pp. 29 – 32, Going Down to Hell is Easy: Alasdair Gray's 'Lanark''', in Glen Murray (ed.), Cencrastus No. 6, Autumn 1981, pp. 19 - 21, Yeats, Eliot, Pound and the Politics of Poetry (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1982), Editor, Vita Mea: The Autobiography of Sir Herbert J. C. Grierson (Aberdeen UP, 2015), The Wealth of the Nation: Scotland, Culture and Independence (Edinburgh UP, 2018), Muriel Spark, Existentialism and the Art of Death (Edinburgh UP, 2019), Constructing the Aesthetics of Nature, in Szécsényi, Endre (ed.), Aesthetics, Nature and Religion: Ronald W. Hepburn and his Legacy (Aberdeen UP, 2020), pp. 195 - 214, Editor, The Collected Works of Kenneth White (4 vols, Edinburgh UP, 2021-2025), Scotland and Environmental Aesthetics, in Radnóti, Sándor, Wessely, Anna, Reményi, Édua (eds.), "To Bring Philosophy out of Closets and Libraries, Schools and Colleges": Ünnepi kötet Szécsényi Endre 60. születésnapjára - Liber Amicorum for Endre Szécsényi (private edition, Budapest, 2025), pp. 121 - 168, Editor, International Companion to the Scottish Novel (Scottish Literature International, 2025),

Awards 2003: Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) 2005: Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) 2007: Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE)

Reviews Morgan, Edwin (1983), The Politics of Poetry: review of Yeats, Eliot, Pound and the Politics of Poetry, in Hearn, Sheila G. (ed.), Cencrastus'' No. 12, Spring 1983, p. 44,