Birlinn (publisher)

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

• Birlinn 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]

• Polygon Books 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 Books was originally set up by students of Edinburgh University in the late 1960s.^[3]

• Mercat Press, founded in 1970 and acquired by Birlinn in 2007, now 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 imprint John Donald.

References

External links

• Birlinn