Birlinn Limited

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Birlinn Limited is an independent publishing house based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Established in 1992 by Managing Director Hugh Andrew,^[1] Birlinn Limited is comprised of a number of imprints:

• The Birlinn imprint publishes Scottish interest books, from biography to history, military history and Scottish Gaelic. The name comes from the old Norse word birlinn, meaning a long boat or small galley with 12 to 18 oars, used especially in the Hebrides and West Highlands of Scotland in the Middle Ages.^[2]

• The Polygon imprint publishes literary fiction and poetry, both classic and modern, from Scottish writers such as Robin Jenkins, George Mackay Brown, and the author of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Alexander McCall Smith. Polygon was originally set up by pupils of Edinburgh University in the late 1960s.^[3]

• Mercat Press, founded in 1970, was acquired by Birlinn in 2007, and now forms an imprint publishing walking and climbing guides. Mercat is the Scots language word for "market" or "trade".^[4]

• Academic books about Scotland are published under the name John Donald.

[edit] References

[edit] External Links

• Birlinn