Research Catalog

Title

Patrick Sellar and the Highland clearances : homicide, eviction and the price of progress / Eric Richards.

Author

Richards, Eric

Publication

Edinburgh : Polygon at Edinburgh, 1999.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xi, 440 p. : ill., maps; 22 cm.

Summary

"Patrick Sellar, fiercest advocate and enforcer of the Highland Clearances, is possibly the most hated man in Scottish history. It is said even now that the grass will not grow on his grave. In the first biography of Sellar ever published Eric Richards uses contemporary sources to reconstruct his life and times, telling a dramatic story that will allow the reader to rejudge the man - for better or for worse."--Jacket.

Subject

• Sellar, Patrick
• Sellar, Patrick, 1780-1851
• Land tenure > Highlands > History > 19th century
• Crofters > Highlands > History > 19th century
• Eviction > Highlands > History > 19th century
• Highlands (Scotland) > History > 19th century
• Sutherland (Scotland) > Biography
• Sutherland (Scotland) > History
• Highlands (Scotland) > History

Genre/Form

• Biographies
• History

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 428-434) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

List of maps and plates -- Preface and acknowledgements -- Maps -- 1. The tears of Patrick Sellar -- 2. Elgin days, 1780-1809 -- 3. Colonising Sutherland and the dazzling plans of 1809 -- 4. The installation -- 5. The new clearances, 1811-12 -- 6. 'The people's folly': Kildonan and Assynt, 1813 -- 7. Sellar and the Strathnaver removals, 1814-15 -- 8. Mackid's precognition in Strathnaver, May 1815 -- 9. Sellar concussed -- 10. Trial and retribution -- 11. The dismissal -- 12. Famine and the final clearances -- 13. Heir to the Straths in the 1820s -- 14. Sellar in his prime -- 16. Rational principles -- 16. The frame of society -- 17. Death, denunciation and posterity -- 18. The tears of progress -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.

ISBN

• 1902930142
• 1902930134 (pbk.)

OCLC

• 41961128
• SCSB-10698047

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library