Ian Maclaren's Scottish Local-Colour Fiction in Transnational Contexts: Networks of Reception, Circulation, and Translation in the United States and Europe

Abstract

This article analyses the early circulation, reception, and translation history of Ian Maclaren's bestselling Scottish local-colour fiction in the United States, the Netherlands, France, and Switzerland. It sketches a comparative model which illuminates the agents of transnational cultural mediation crucial to the international popularity of local-colour fiction in the late nineteenth century. In the USA, key factors for Maclaren's popularity were the interconnected transatlantic publishing world and audiences already receptive to dialect literature. In Europe, while the bestselling quality of his collections and readers’ previous familiarity with regional fiction played a significant role, additional factors included: in the Netherlands, Maclaren's clerical background and the place of established religion in publishing; in France and Switzerland, periodicals attentive to international trends in fiction and to internal regionalist phenomena, along with the initiative of a translator with a flair for Breton regionalism and well connected to the Swiss and Parisian literary milieux.