Published in a pirated edition in the United States, A Galloway Herd was turned down by T.Fisher Unwin in 1894. It was originally serialised in The Christian Leader Magazine in 1891-2 and as such marks Crockett’s first serial fiction. Some of the chapters were later integrated into Bog Myrtle and Peat (1895). It was never revised for novelisation and thus the loose episodic style is somewhat .uneven. However, it is well worth the read. 'A Galloway Herd' also introduces us to the fictional setting of Drumquhat, which is to become familiar in many of Crockett’s later novels.  The pastoral setting is realistic but elevated through the eyes of Wattie to become an adventure which ranges even into revolutionary France at the time of the Paris Commune.  This gives us the first taste of one of Crockett’s strongest literary skills, placing the ‘ordinary’ characters in the foreground while ‘history’ runs along in the background. ‘A Galloway Herd’ shows us the romantic power of the book as clearly as it shows us the domestic power of women and the stigma of illegitimacy.  The minister in the story wants Wattie to become a ‘shepherd’ for Jesus, but Wattie, and Crockett were destined to be Galloway Herds of quite a different kind. The later novel Kit Kennedy (1899) covers much of the same ground but with more mature writerly skill, however this is a very interesting story in its own right. The central character is Wattie Anderson and his story is told initially from the first person dialect voice of Saunders McQuhirr, later to become one of Crockett’s strongest and best loved characters, and a fairly loosely disguised version of his own grandfather.  The story shifts into the third person as it develops into Wattie’s romantic view of his life – because for all the third person narrative, we feel like this is a boy, telling us his own story.  The adventures and events that happen to Wattie could all be explained away from an adult perspective, but from the child’s view they are heightened, romanticised and offer an insight into both the world of a boy with a vivid imagination, and the melodramatic style itself. 

VOLUME 16 OF THE GALLOWAY COLLECTION. BUY THE BOOK ONLINE HERE 

An instant bestseller when published (following serialisation) in 1894, ‘The Lilac Sunbonnet’ is an unashamed domestic romance. It has been sadly misunderstood latterly and is well worth more close inspection. It is important to appreciate the role of humour in the work. The narrator takes an ironic stance from the very beginning: ‘the young man was sufficient of a hero. And not too much.’  This view of the hero was to become stock in trade for Crockett.  While in ‘The Raiders’ we see Patrick Heron as his own retrospective ironic narrator, in ‘The Lilac Sunbonnet,’ the narrator stands outside the story but the deftness of ironic touch is the same. Crockett asks us, from the very beginning, to invest an ironic interest in seeing the young man taught a good lesson in love. 
Crockett writes of romance using a Romance style, offering a clever representation of the way young lovers behave. As such it explores emotion and the impossibility of using religion to control emotion. The prologue starts in media res, with an introduction to Ralph Peden as he meets Jess Kissock. This is not an irrelevancy to the main story, it is a vital part of an almost medieval interlacing pattern. This clever stylistic device allows the author to show parallels and patterns which reinforce his central notion that love is natural and God is love. Here Crockett has used the episodic form of serialised fiction and heightened it. And yet, he never loses the skill of the romancer. The story cracks along, drawing the reader with it. Crockett reveals the profound effect that even the most seemingly insignificant act by one character has on another, thus further illustrating the significance of love. The episodic patterning and interlacing of events builds to give the reader a deeper exploration of love than the basic boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins girl plot structure might suggest. At each stage of the journey, love is explored from a range of perspectives. The main story may be carried by the hero and heroine, but the minor characters add colour, depth and imagination to it. Crockett shows that nature is at the heart of both religion and love. He uses imagery effectively, especially natural imagery and there is and underplayed but underlying sexual tension and passion revealed in the most ordinary of things. All in all, if you come to this novel with an open mind, you may be surprised by the strength and depth you discover within. 

VOLUME 14 OF THE GALLOWAY COLLECTION. BUY THE BOOK ONLINE HERE

‘The Play Actress’ was originally published in serial form under the title ‘The Great Preacher’ in 1894 and then as a novella in the Antonym Series by T.Fisher Unwin.  The ‘Great’ Preacher of the original title is rural minister Gilbert Rutherford. At the end of a Sunday service a woman dressed in black brings him a grand-daughter (Ailie) he never knew existed. This is the child of his now deceased son. Bessie (the child’s aunt) has taken Ailie from her dissolute mother,, who lives in London and moves in theatrical circles, (it was the dead son’s dying wish) and brought her to be reared by his father.  This unexpected event presents Gilbert with all sorts of emotional and practical challenges.  He does not shirk his duty but he also determines to challenge his prejudices and, once Ailie is set up happily in Galloway, he travels to London to find out what is behind this ‘story’  and deal with the family issues. Rutherford is drawn into what he has always believed is the immoral world of the theatre and finds himself both facing the reality of urban poverty, and challenging his views of ‘goodness.’   

The obvious  biblical analogy  is that of the prodigal son (daughter or even grand-daughter in this case) but it is a contemporary story which travels between the rural world of Galloway and the urban poverty of London.  While Crockett is known as a ‘romancer’ rather than a realist, he did not shy away from contemporary social issues in his work.   What Crockett describes is an urban reality we might recognise from a Dickens novel. He developed this story theme several times in his later work, most notably in ‘The Moss Troopers’ where he considers the ‘evils’ of London and in ‘Sandy’s Love’ where he delves into ‘the theatre’ and London life once again.

Crockett’s friend and contemporary J.M.Barrie enjoyed ‘The Play Actress’ so much that he wanted to adapt it for the stage and he took it on honeymoon with him in 1894. There is no record that it ever actually became a stage play.

Crockett  wrote of The Play Actress, ‘A great deal of nonsense is spoken in England about the Scotch Sabbath. I enjoyed my Sabbaths immensely. It is true that I was born to it. We used to drive over to the Cameronian Kirk at Castle Douglas (that  'Kirk on the Hill,'  of which  I  have written in my little book, ‘The Play Actress’-a book  written  to amuse myself, whilst I was writing ‘The Raiders’).

VOLUME 30 OF THE GALLOWAY COLLECTION. BUY THE BOOK AT UNCO HERE
LINK TO PLAYACTRESS125 HERE 

‘The Stickit Minister’ was first published in 1893. ‘The Stickit Minister and some Common men’ to give it its full title, was compiled out of the many stories Crockett wrote during the 1880s for the Glasgow Penny Weekly and The Christian Leader.

Crockett himself explained how it came about: I was writing editorials on theological subjects for religious periodicals, and  one  day the editor of  The Christian Leader wrote to me and asked me to send him an  editorial which was wanted at once. I had  no  time to write one, and  I  told him so, but  at the  same time I sent him one  of  the sketches  which I had in  my drawer, and  asked him if  he could use that instead. It was the story called A Day in the Life of the Reverend James Pitbye, which is in ‘The Stickit Minister.’ I didn't think that the editor would use it.   However, he wrote me: 'Never send me anything else.' So I continued sending him these sketches, and they met with a great deal of appreciation, and were widely copied into the papers, especially in Canada and Australia. Almost all the tales in ‘The Stickit Minister,’ appeared in this way in The Christian Leader. I used to get as much as a guinea apiece for them. I did not think of republishing them in a collected  form  till  I was  strongly urged  to do so by Doctor Nichol. So I submitted them to Unwin, and that is how ‘The Stickit Minister’ came to be. It was successful almost from the very first.'     
         
Of  the twenty four stories in ‘The Stickit Minister,’ ministers feature as central characters in the majority.  The collection also introduces us to Saunders McQuhirr, a redoubtable character. He is a down to earth Cameronian elder, who is clearly drawn from Crockett’s own grandfather.  The title story is told by Saunders McQuhirr and is the story of Robert Fraser who sacrifices his career for his brother.  He remains ‘Stickit’ (which means that he was without a parish of his own) in order that his brother may forge a career in medicine. Saunders son Alec tells the same story from a different perspective in the 1900 collection ‘The Stickit Minister’s Wooing.’   We are also taken out of Galloway and get our first introduction to Edinburgh urchin Cleg Kelly, who got a novel of his own in 1896.

The collection offers a good introduction to Crockett’s narrative style, his ironic couthy humour (without which one can fail to understand stories such as ‘The Heather Lintie’) and his uncompromising stance on poverty as well as his use of ‘Scotch’ dialect in his work.  It is a good book to dip in and out of and a great introduction to Crockett’s early writing. 

Crockett dedicated ‘The Stickit Minister’ to R.L.Stevenson thus: Dedication to Robert Louis Stevenson of Scotland and Samoa   I dedicate these stories of that Grey Galloway land where about the graves of the martyrs the waups are crying – his heart remembers how. And in response Stevenson wrote Crockett a poem. 

The publisher, T.Fisher Unwin specialised in discovering new writing talent and  published some of the most experimental writers of the period, H. G. Wells, John Galsworthy, Somerset Maugham, Joseph Conrad, George Moore, and Ford Madox Ford. Like Crockett, they moved on to other publishers when they became famous. Unwin published six of Crockett’s early works, which are among his best known, perhaps because Unwin invested so much time, energy and marketing skill in promoting him as a new writer. 

VOLUME 13 OF ‘THE GALLOWAY COLLECTION’  BUY THE BOOK AT UNCO 
Stories in the collection: 
1. The Stickit Minister
2. Accepted of the Beasts
3. Trials for License by the Presbytery of Pitscottie
4. The Heather Lintie
5. The Split in the Marrow Kirk
6. The Probationer
7. The Lammas Preaching
8. The Tragedy of Duncan Ducanson, Schoolmaster
9. Why David Oliphant remained a Presbyterian
10. The Three Maister Peter Slees, Ministers in the  Parish of Couthy
11. The Courtship of Allan Fairely, or Earlswood
12. John Smith of Arkland prepares his sermon
13. A day in the life of Rev. James Pitbye, 
14. The Glenkells Short leet
15. Boanerges Simpson's Encumbrance
16. A Knight-Errant of the Streets
17. The Progress of Cleg Kelly, Mission Worker
18. Ensamples to the Flock
19. The Siege of M'Lurg's Mill 
20. The Minister of Scaur casts out with his Maker 
21. John Black, Critic in Ordinary
22. The Candid Friend 
23. A Midsummer Idyll 
24. The Tutor of Curlywee