Books

FORTHCOMING:

After Culloden: The British Army, Scotland and Imperial Policy in Global Conflict. Oxford University Press, c2027-2028

The Shortest History of Scotland. Old Stables Press, January 2026. 250pp.

‘the best available history of Scotland’- Jeremy Black; ‘panoramic and sweeping, while always rigorously scholarly’-William Dalrymple.

IN PRINT:

Scotland: The Global History (Yale University Press, 2022)

Press and Awards:

  • Spectator History Book of the Year Choice
  • Marginal Revolution NonFiction Book of the Year choice 2023
  • CHOICE outstanding academic title 2023
  • Australian Broadcasting Corporation Great Reads, Radio Free Innsbruck Choice
  • Times Leader, 19 August 2022.
  • The Guardian: ‘there can be few historians of Pittock’s eminence who can glide so easily from the Swedish campaigns of the 1630s… to James McAvoy… or the cultural significance of John Byrne’s 80s TV drama Tutti Frutti… argues compellingly that at the heart of Scotland’s global success has been an outstanding education system’
  • Choice: ‘The “must-have” story of Scotland… Surely this new publication… will be a book of interest to everyone in our global community’
  • Scottish Business Network: ‘Excellent. … A significant, majestically sweeping history of Scotland from 1603 to the present.’
  • William Dalrymple: ‘a terrific book’
  • Jackie Bird: ‘a fabulous book’
  • Anna Keay (CEO Landmark Trust): ‘a wonderful book‘
  • Tyler Cowen: ‘the best book on Scotland I have ever read’
  • Matthew McDowell: ‘one of the leading books… that historians of Scotland will cite for years to come’; ‘a comprehensive account’
  • Joe Goldblatt: ‘I wanted you to know that your new book Scotland, the Global History is one of the great literary treasures I have read… this book… will mean so much to so many for so long’

The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Works of Allan Ramsay. 6 volumes (Edinburgh University Press, 2022-24)

Press:

  • Eighteenth-Century Scotland on Tea-Table Miscellany: ‘could hardly be surpassed… the striking musicological accomplishment should not displace acknowledgement of the editors’ vast cultural insight’
  • Eighteenth-Century Scotland: ‘groundbreaking’
  • Eighteenth-Century Intelligencer: ‘Wow’
  • Burns Chronicle: ‘exemplary’

Enlightenment in a Smart City: Civic Development in Edinburgh, 1660-1750 (Edinburgh University Press, 2019, 2022)

Press and Awards:  

  • Book of the Year and Nominated Saltire Research Book of the Year; highlighted for History Book of the Year
  • History Scotland: ‘Wonderfully rich, wide-ranging, compelling and utterly convincing… a really splendid book’
  • Scottish Review: ’extraordinarily impressive… there is such richness here it is hard to know what to emphasize’

Robert Burns: the Scots Musical Museum. 2 volumes (Oxford University Press, 2018)

Press:

  • Featured, BBC 1 The One Show
  • Modern Humanities Research Association: ‘a monumental contribution to the study of Burns and Scottish music, whose influence will be felt for decades to come’
  • Scottish Literary Review: ‘magisterial… This ground-breaking work is essential reading for Burns scholars and for a broader understanding of the history and development of Scottish music and song’

Culloden (Oxford University Press, 2016, 2017, 2022; Folio Society edition, 2021)

Press and Awards:

  • History Today Book of the Year choice
  • House of Commons reading list
  • Herald Christmas choice
  • recommended: Country Life, Herald, Michigan War Studies Review

The Road to Independence ? Scotland in the Balance (Reaktion; Chicago University Press, 2014, 2017)

Catalan edition, translated by Dolors Selis and introduced by Rafael Xambó, El camí cap a la independencia: Escocia des dels anys seixanta. Vilob d’Onyar, 2008, with a Foreword by Rt Hon Alex Salmond, First Minister of Scotland.

Press and Awards:

  • Nominated: Saltire Book of the Year, Orwell Prize
  • Recommended: London Review of Books, Daily Telegraph, Bella Caledonia (best 24 books on Scottish politics)
  • Featured: New York Review of Books.
  • Scotsman: ‘enormously informative and often thought-provoking… this book could hardly be improved on: it’s lucid, witty, beautifully written’
  • Nations and Nationalism: ‘probably the most accessible, contemporary and comprehensive introduction to Scottish society and politics today’
  • Diplomat: ‘it does not fail in its promise… a timely and comprehensive volume’

The Myth of the Jacobite Clans (Edinburgh University Press, 1995, 1999, 2009, 2019)

Press:

  • Times Higher: ‘Formidable talents… the doyen of the present crop’
  • Daniel Szechi: ‘One of the most important books written on Jacobitism in the last 30 years’
  • The National: ‘The benchmark for any investigation into the military dynamics of Jacobitism’
  • History Scotland: ‘As Murray Pittock famously remarked in The Myth of the Jacobite Clans’

Scottish and Irish Romanticism (Oxford University Press, 2008, 2009, 2011)

Press:

  • Byron Journal: ‘Pittock has opened up the study of Romanticism in  the British Isles in ways that recent champions of an array of marginalised writers and topics have not… This is a book that throws open the windows and unlocks the doors’
  • Estudios Irlandeses: ‘It is difficult to do justice in a short review to a work of the depth and complexity of Scottish and Irish Romanticism… this magisterial, intricate book… an important and nuanced challenge to the post-war version of literary Romanticism’
  • Electric Scotland: ‘As good as it gets… impressive… a masterpiece’
  • Ian Duncan: ‘An outstanding contribution…The book’s comparative reach sets it apart… and confirms the leading role that Murray Pittock has played in the reorientation of British literary studies’

The Invention of Scotland: The Stuart Myth and the Scottish Identity 1638 to the Present (Routledge, 1991, 2014, 2016)

Press and Awards:

  • Royal Society of Edinburgh BP Humanities Research Prize for outstanding Scottish academic under 40
  • Nikolai Tolstoy: ‘Brilliant insights… cluster on every page… flawless’
  • Topical Books: ’Possibly the most interesting book I have ever read on what it means to be Scottish’
  • Albion: ‘One of the most important books on modern Scotland’

Spectrum of Decadence: The Literature of the 1890s (Routledge, 1993, 2014, 2016)

Press:

  • Alex Murray: ‘one of the most important works on British Decadence’ (in 2023, on the 30th anniversary of the book’s first appearance)

Material Culture and Sedition, 1688-1760: Treacherous Objects, Secret Places (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)

Press and Awards:

  • Shortleet, Saltire Research Book of the Year, Nominated MLA Lowell Prize
  • British Association for Romantic Studies: ‘dauntingly erudite’
  • Scriblerian: ‘Splendid’

Celtic Identity and the British Image (Manchester University Press, UBC Press, 1999)

Press:

  • JCD Clark: ‘Magnificent’
  • English Historical Review: ‘Pittock resolutely follows a ”four nations” version of the new British history, gently chastising and then marginalizing Linda Colley’s two-and-a-half nation Britons’
  • Irish Studies Review: ‘A telling critique of Benedict Anderson… a timely and tantalising glimpse of the kind of rewriting of the history of the four nations that will be possible’
  • History: ‘a consummate grasp of the issues of national identity, state formation and post-colonialism… a compelling study’
  • BBC: ‘another great book’

Robert Burns in Global Culture (Bucknell University Press, 2011), edited

Press:

  • Electric Scotland: ‘An excellent book… the cutting edge of critical study on Burns today‘
  • Scottish Literary Review: ‘Highly original and remarkably informative… an invaluable and indispensable book… extraordinary’

The Edinburgh Companion to Scottish Romanticism (Edinburgh University Press; Columbia University, 2011), edited

Press:

  • Owen Dudley Edwards: ‘Exemplary as always… If Murray Pittock had never existed, Scottish historiography and literary criticism would have been immeasurably poorer’
  • Forum for Modern Language Studies: ‘the depth and coherence of the collection make it the kind of landmark publication it claims to be’

Loyalty and Identity: Jacobites at Home and Abroad (Macmillan, 2009), co-edited with Paul Monod and Daniel Szechi

Press:

  • Scottish Historical Review: ‘Three of the world’s most eminent historians of Jacobitism… a substantial contribution’

Poetry and Jacobite Politics in Eighteenth-Century Britain and Ireland (Cambridge University Press, 1994, 1995, 2006, 2008, 2009)

Press:

  • Eighteenth-Century Scotland: ‘The master of Jacobite literary culture has struck again’
  • ‘Studies in English Literature: A learned book… vast knowledge and clear readings of writing far, far from London’
  • Forum for Modern Language Studies, Year’s Work in Scottish Literature: ’The standard work’
  • Albion: ‘it is to be hoped others will follow where he has led’
  • Modern Philology: ‘will no doubt be read for a very long time’
  • Reformation, Religion and Literature: ‘magnificently compelling’

The Reception of Sir Walter Scott in Europe (Continuum, 2007, 2014), edited

Press:

  • Choice: ‘Recommended’
  • Comparative Critical Studies: ‘A fascinating and long overdue study’
  • Byron Journal: ‘A fascinating and compelling book… inspired… compulsive reading’

The Reception of Robert Burns in Europe (Bloomsbury, 2014), edited

The Edinburgh History of Scottish Literature. Three volumes (Edinburgh University Press, 2007), co-edited with Ian Brown, Thomas Clancy, and Susan Manning

Press:

  • Owen Dudley Edwards: ‘it is doubtful if a project in literary history has been shaped in the last century with anything of this thoroughness and multiplicity of disciplines… this astonishing achievement’
  • Scotland on Sunday: ‘An extremely important and substantial work…sets an influential benchmark about the current state of thinking about Scottish literature’
  • Scottish Review of Books: ‘As deep as it is comprehensive’

A New History of Scotland (Sutton, 2003)

Press and Awards:

  • Called for the Wolfson Prize for the Public Understanding of History
  • Scottish Left Review: ‘an extremely useful introduction… intriguing and essential’
  • The Scots Magazine: ‘Here we discover much of what as individuals and a nation we ned to know… a clear overview of the history of our nation… also provides a firm and confident launch pad into the future’

James Hogg: The Jacobite Relics of Scotland. Two volumes (Edinburgh University Press, 2002)

Press:

  • Albion: ‘sets new standards for primary research in eighteenth-century song-texts’
  • British Association of Romantic Studies: ‘ground-breaking’
  • Studies in Hogg and His World: ‘Who better… than Murray Pittock… to illuminate this fundamental text… Get hold of a copy’

Scottish Nationality (Palgrave, 2001)

Press:

  • Nations and Nationalism: ‘a major achievement’

Jacobitism (Macmillan, 1998)

Press:

  • History: ‘For all who want to find out what actually happened’
  • History Teaching Review: ’Excellent and authoritative… worth reading for the first ten pages alone… a masterly account’

Inventing and Resisting Britain: Cultural Identities in Britain and Ireland, 1685–1789 (Macmillan, 1997)

Press:

  • Irish Studies Review: ‘As straightforward as it is radical’
  • Albion: ‘A substantial contribution…provides compelling evidence to show that more than two-thirds of the population of Britain did not belong to the established church’