John Buchan

Scottish novelist, short-story writer, poet, historian, and politician

• Born: August 26, 1875
• Birthplace: Perth, Scotland
• Died: February 11, 1940
• Place of death: Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Biography

John Buchan (BUHK-uhn) was a prolific writer of history and fiction, a distinguished member of Parliament, a lawyer, an editor, a director of information for the British government, a churchman, and governor general of Canada. He was born in Perth, Scotland, August 26, 1875, to a Free Church minister, John Buchan, and a farmer’s daughter, Helen Masterson Buchan. Surviving an early skull injury which kept him in bed for a year, he entered Glasgow University when he was seventeen; he then, having been awarded a scholarship, went to Brasenose College at Oxford, where he won a number of literary prizes and wrote three books.

In 1900 he went to London to study law and was admitted to the Middle Temple bar the following year. During that time he also served as a member of the editorial board of the Spectator. He began his career in public service by going with Lord Milner to South Africa, where he acquired a broadness of outlook that made him a successful administrator. Two years later he returned to England, having by that time completed five novels.

He entered into partnership with the publishers Thomas A. Nelson and Sons in 1907. He married Susan Charlotte Grosvenor and had three sons and one daughter; his wife provided him with the opportunity for writing and served as his hostess during various government assignments.

After leaving Nelson and Sons, Buchan worked for a time as director of the Reuter Press Agency and then, during World War I, as correspondent for the London Times. His most famous novel, The Thirty-Nine Steps, was published at that time. While serving next as director of information for the British government, he not only edited Nelson and Sons’s twenty-four-volume popular history of the war but also wrote his own four-volume history.

Buchan entered Parliament in 1927 as a Conservative member for the Scottish universities, and he held his seat until his appointment in 1935 as governor general of Canada brought with it the title of Baron Tweedsmuir. He had previously been honored by being made lord high commissioner of the Elder Church of Scotland in 1933. He was an agreeable and efficient governor general, friend to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and host to King George VI and Queen Elizabeth when the royal pair visited Canada in 1939. Buchan’s death at Montreal, February 11, 1940, was the result of a skull injury.

Buchan was a capable, exciting, and prolific writer, even though he led a busy political life and was often able to write only on weekends and during the summers. His historical works, particularly his Oliver Cromwell, were well received, but he was most popular for his adventure stories, many of them featuring Richard Hannay, who figures in The Thirty-Nine Steps, Greenmantle, Mr. Standfast, and The Three Hostages.

Author Works

Long Fiction:

Sir Quixote of the Moors, Being Some Account of an Episode in the Life of the Sieur de Rohaine, 1895

John Burnet of Barns, 1898

A Lost Lady of Old Years, 1899

The Half-Hearted, 1900

Prester John, 1910 (pb. in U.S. as The Great Diamond Pipe)

Salute to Adventurers, 1915

The Thirty-Nine Steps, 1915

The Power-House, 1916

Greenmantle, 1916

Mr. Standfast, 1919

Huntingtower, 1922

Midwinter: Certain Travellers in Old England, 1923

The Three Hostages, 1924

John Macnab, 1925

The Dancing Floor, 1926

Witch Wood, 1927

The Courts of the Morning, 1929

Castle Gay, 1930

The Blanket of the Dark, 1931

A Prince of the Captivity, 1933

The Free Fishers, 1934

The House of the Four Winds, 1935

The Island of Sheep, 1936 (pb. in U.S. as The Man from the Norlands)

Sick Heart River, 1941 (pb. in U.S. as Mountain Meadow)

Short Fiction:

Grey Weather: Moorland Tales of My Own People, 1899

The Watcher by the Threshold, and Other Tales, 1902

The Moon Endureth: Tales and Fancies, 1912

The Path of the King, 1921

The Runagates Club, 1928

The Gap in the Curtain, 1932

The Far Islands and Other Tales of Fantasy, 1984 (John Bell, editor; Larry Dickson, illustrator)

The Best Short Stories of John Buchan, 1980 (David Daniell, editor)

The Complete Short Stories 3 volumes, 1996–97 (Andrew Lownie, editor; William Buchan, forward)

Poetry:

The Pilgrim Fathers: The Newdigate Prize Poem 1898, 1898

Ordeal by Marriage: An Eclogue, 1915

Poems, Scots and English, 1917, revised 1936

The Poetry of Neil Munro, 1931

Nonfiction:

Scholar Gipsies, 1896

Sir Walter Raleigh, 1897

Brasenose College, 1898

The African Colony: Studies in the Reconstruction, 1903

The Law Relating to the Taxation of Foreign Income, 1905

A Lodge in the Wilderness, 1906

Some Eighteenth Century Byways, and Other Essays, 1908

What the Home Bill Means, 1912

The Marquis of Montrose, 1913

Andrew Jameson, Lord Ardwall, 1913

Britain’s War by Land, 1915

The Achievements of France, 1915

Nelson’s History of the War, 1915–1919 (24 volumes)

The Battle of Jutland, 1916

The Battle of the Somme, First Phase, 1916

The Future of the War, 1916

The Purpose of the War, 1916

The Battle of Somme, Second Phase, 1917

The Battle-Honours of Scotland, 1914–1918, 1919

The Island of Sheep, 1919 (with Susan Buchan)

These for Remembrance, 1919

The History of the South African Forces in France, 1920

Francis and Riversdale Grenfell: A Memoir, 1920

Miscellanies, Literary and Historical, 1921 (2 volumes)

A Book of Escapes and Hurried Journeys, 1922

The Last Secrets: The Final Mysteries of Exploration, 1923

The Memory of Sir Walter Scott, 1923

Days to Remember: The British Empire in the Great War, 1923 (with Henry Newbolt)

Lord Minto: A Memoir, 1924

Some Notes on Sir Walter Scott, 1924

The History of the Royal Scots Fusiliers, 1678–1918, 1925

The Man and the Book: Sir Walter Scott, 1925

Two Ordeals of Democracy, 1925

Homilies and Recreations, 1926

The Fifteenth Scottish Division, 1914-1919, 1926 (with John Stewart)

To the Electors of the Scottish Universities, 1927

Montrose, 1928

The Causal and the Casual in History, 1929

What the Union of the Churches Means to Scotland, 1929

Montrose and Leadership, 1930

The Revision of Dogmas, 1930

The Kirk in Scotland, 1560–1929, 1930 (with George Adam Smith)

Lord Rosebery, 1847–1930, 1930

The Novel and the Fairy Tale, 1931

Sir Walter Scott, 1932

Julius Caesar, 1932

Andrew Lang and the Border, 1933

The Margins of Life, 1933

The Massacre of Glencoe, 1933

Gordon at Khartoum, 1934

Oliver Cromwell, 1934

The Principles of Social Service, 1934

The Scottish Church and the Empire, 1934

The University, the Library, and the Common Weal, 1934

The King’s Grace, 1910–1935, 1935 (pb. in U.S. as The People’s King: George V)

The Western Mind, an Address, 1935

Men and Deeds, 1935, 1969

A University’s Bequest to Youth, an Address, 1936

Augustus, 1937

The Interpreter’s House, 1938

Presbyterianism: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, 1938

Canadian Occasions: Addresses by Lord Tweedsmuir, 1940

Comments and Characters, 1940 (W. Forbes Gray, editor)

Memory Hold-the-Door, 1940 (pb. in U.S. as Pilgrim’s Way: An Essay in Recollection)

The Clearing House: A Survey of One Man’s Mind, 1946 (Lady Tweedsmuir, editor)

Children’s/Young Adult Literature:

Sir Walter Raleigh, 1911

The Magic Walking-Stick, 1932

The Long Traverse, 1941 (pb. in U.S. as Lake of Gold)

Edited Texts:

Essays and Apothegms of Francis Lord Bacon, 1894

Musa Piscatrix, 1896

The Compleat Angler: Or, The Contemplative Man’s Recreation, 1901

Great Hours in Sport, 1921

A History of English Literature, 1923

The Nations of Today: A New History of the World, 1923–1924

The Northern Muse, 1924

Modern Short Stories, 1926

The Teaching of History, 1928–1930 (11 volumes)

A Shorter History of English Literature, 1937 (revised and corrected by Majl Ewing)

Bibliography

Buchan, Anna. Unforgettable, Unforgotten. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1945. This memoir by one of Buchan’s sisters provides a personal look at the author. Indexed and illustrated, it is especially good for his early life.

“Buchan, John.” In Mystery and Suspense Writers: The Literature of Crime, Detection, and Espionage, edited by Robin W. Winks and Maureen Corrigan. New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1998. Essay in a collection of articles on sixty-eight mystery authors from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries provides an overview of Buchan’s life, an analysis of his work, and a bibliography.

Buchan, William. John Buchan: A Memoir. Toronto, Ont.: Griffen House, 1982. Written by John Buchan’s son, this very readable biography humanizes Buchan by concentrating on his personal, rather than public, life. Based on William’s childhood memories, as well as his own expertise as a novelist, poet, and literary critic. Well indexed and contains a good bibliography.

Butts, Dennis. “The Hunter and the Hunted: The Suspense Novels of John Buchan.” In Spy Thrillers: From Buchan to Le Carré, edited by Clive Bloom. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990. Butts’s analysis of Buchan’s work appears in one of thirteen essays examining books by twentieth century suspense novelists. Includes an introductory essay about the genre, a bibliography, and an index.

Cawelti, John G., and Bruce A. Rosenberg. The Spy Story. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Cawelti’s chapter, “The Joys of Buchaneering,” argues that Buchan’s Richard Hannay stories are the crucial link between the spy adventures and the espionage novels of the twentieth century. Buchan developed a formula that was adopted and given various twists by successive authors. Includes an excellent bibliography and appendixes.

Daniell, David. The Interpreter’s House: A Critical Assessment of John Buchan. London: Nelson, 1975. Concentrates on the tension between Calvinism and Platonism in Buchan’s life, two perspectives identified as the key to appreciating and understanding Buchan and his works. Scholarly and very thorough, the book refutes many of the common myths about Buchan.

Green, Martin. A Biography of John Buchan and His Sister Anna: The Personal Background of Their Literary Work. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990. A useful study of how literary talent is developed. This is a strictly chronological approach, except for the first chapter, “Heroic and Non-heroic Values.” Includes notes and bibliography.

Hitz, Frederick P. The Great Game: The Myth and Reality of Espionage. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. Hitz, the former inspector general of the Central Intelligence Agency, compares fictional spies in the work of Buchan and others to actual intelligence agents. His purpose is to demonstrate that truth is stranger than fiction.

Kruse, Juanita. John Buchan and the Idea of Empire: Popular Literature and Political Ideology. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1989. Kruse approaches Buchan’s novels from a postcolonial perspective, describing his ideas about the British Empire and examining the role of colonialism and imperialism in his work.

Lownie, Andrew. John Buchan: The Presbyterian Cavalier. Boston: D. R. Godine, 2003. Originally published in London in 1995. As the subtitle indicates, Lownie is concerned with developing the Scottish roots of Buchan’s writing. This very helpful biography includes a chronology, a family tree, notes, and a bibliography.

Smith, Janet Adam. John Buchan and His World. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1979. Only 128 pages, this is an updated version of an earlier biography. Makes use of newer material provided by Buchan’s family and publisher. Illustrated and well written, the biography concentrates on Buchan’s life as both a writer and a public servant.