Robert Cairns Craig (16 February 1949 – 29 July 2026) was a Scottish literary scholar, specialising in Scottish and modernist literature. He was Glucksman Professor of Irish and Scottish Studies and director of the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen from 2005 to 2023, then he was professor emeritus there. Before that, he had taught at the University of Edinburgh, serving as head of the English literature department from 1997 to 2003, and as deputy director of The Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities from 1998 to 2005.'CRAIG, Prof. R. Cairns', Who's Who 2017, A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 2017; online edn, Oxford University Press, 2016; online edn, Nov 2016 accessed 10 Sept 2017 He was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 2005."Craig, Prof. R. Cairns", Who's Who (Oxford University Press, 2017). Retrieved 1 July 2018.
Life and work Craig was awarded a PhD from the University of Edinburgh in 1978 for his thesis W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot and the Associationist Aesthetic. While a postgraduate student in the mid-seventies, he taught Scottish literature at the Scottish Universities International Summer School, and this led to him assisting one of his students, Professor Masaru Victor Otake, with the translation of Hugh MacDiarmid's A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle into Japanese. The work was published in 1981.<ref>Craig, Cairns, "The Japanese Translation of A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle", in Mackintosh, Jim, Riach, Alan, & Robertson, James (eds) (2026), Ayont the Thistle: A gallimaufry of poetry and prose to mark the centenary (1926 - 2026) of Hugh MacDiarmid's 'A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle''', Tippermuir Books, Perth, pp. 65 - 76, </ref>
He published on authors including W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Iain Banks, and Muriel Spark.
His 1984 book on Yeats, Eliot, and Pound was described by Seamus Deane as lacking a little clarity, panache and focus, but offering an "engrossing" exploration of the relationship between modernism and reactionary politics, which he links via memory, and particularly Archibald Alison's theory of associationism; Deane called it "a complicated story, illustrated by Craig with such well-chosen and well-timed quotations that it is difficult to resist."
In 1991 he wrote "Rooms without a view", an influential article attacking "heritage film".The Modern Scottish Novel: Narrative and the National Imagination (1999) brought a "modern, inclusive, skeptical intelligence" to the question of Scottish literature.
Craig was general editor of the four-volume series History of Scottish Literature (published 1987-89).
He was also involved as editor or publisher with magazines including Cencrastus, Edinburgh Review and Radical Scotland.
Craig relaunched the Aberdeen University Press (est. in 1900) in 2013.
Craig died in Aberdour on 29 July 2026, aged 77.Cairns Craig Legacy
Publications The Body in the Kit Bag: History and the Scottish Novel, in Cencrastus No. 1, Autumn 1979, pp. 18 – 22, Fearful Selves: Character, Community and the Scottish Imagination, in Cencrastus No. 4, Winter 1980-81, pp. 29 – 32, Going Down to Hell is Easy: Alasdair Gray's 'Lanark', in Glen Murray (ed.), Cencrastus No. 6, Autumn 1981, pp. 19 - 21, Yeats, Eliot, Pound and the Politics of Poetry (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1982), Peripheries, in Cencrastus No. 9, Summer 1982, pp. 3 - 5, Giving Speech to the Silent, which reviews Continuous: 50 Sonnets from The School of Eloquence by Tony Harrison and From the Domain of Arnheim by Alastair Fowler, in Hearn, Sheila G. (ed.), Cencrastus No. 10, Autumn 1982, pp. 43 & 44, Visitors from the Stars: Scottish Film Culture, in Hearn, Sheila G. (ed.), Cencrastus No. 11, New Year 1983, pp. 6 - 11, An Interview with Kurt Vonnegut in Hearn, Sheila G. (ed.), Cencrastus No. 13, Summer 1983, pp. 29 - 31, Lourd on My Hert, which reviews Chapman 35/36: The State of Scotland - A Predicament for the Scottish Writer?, edited by Joy Hendry; Scotland: The Broken Image by Norman Allan; The State of Scotland: A Poem, by Duncan Glen; and Europa's Lover, by Douglas Dunn, in Hearn, Sheila G. (ed.), Cencrastus No. 15, New Year 1984, pp. 54 & 55, George Orwell and the English Ideology (Part 1), in Hearn, Sheila G. (ed.), Cencrastus No. 16, Spring 1984, pp. 12 - 17, George Orwell and the English Ideology (Part 2), in Parker, Geoff (ed.), Cencrastus No. 17, Summer 1984, pp. 10 - 15, Nation and History, in Parker, Geoff (ed.), Cencrastus No. 19, Winter 1984, pp. 13 - 16, General editor, Editor of 3-4 vols, The History of Scottish Literature (4 vols, Aberdeen UP, 1987–89), Out of History: Narrative Paradigms in Scottish and English Culture (Polygon,1996), The Modern Scottish Novel: Narrative and the National Imagination (Edinburgh UP, 1999), Iain Banks's Complicity: A Reader's Guide (Continuum, 2002), Constituting Scotland (Edinburgh Review No. 109, 2002), Associationism and the Literary Imagination: From the Phantasmal Chaos (Edinburgh UP, 2007), Intending Scotland: Explorations in Scottish Culture since the Enlightenment (Edinburgh UP, 2009), . Editor, Vita Mea: The Autobiography of Sir Herbert J. C. Grierson (Aberdeen UP, 2015), The Wealth of the Nation: Scotland, Culture and Independence (Edinburgh UP, 2018), Muriel Spark, Existentialism and the Art of Death (Edinburgh UP, 2019), Constructing the Aesthetics of Nature, in Szécsényi, Endre (ed.), Aesthetics, Nature and Religion: Ronald W. Hepburn and his Legacy (Aberdeen UP, 2020), pp. 195 - 214, Editor, The Collected Works of Kenneth White (4 vols, Edinburgh UP, 2021-2025), Scotland and Environmental Aesthetics, in Radnóti, Sándor, Wessely, Anna, Reményi, Édua (eds.), "To Bring Philosophy out of Closets and Libraries, Schools and Colleges": Ünnepi kötet Szécsényi Endre 60. születésnapjára - Liber Amicorum for Endre Szécsényi (private edition, Budapest, 2025), pp. 121 - 168, Editor, International Companion to the Scottish Novel (Scottish Literature International, 2025),
Awards 2003: Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) 2005: Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) 2007: Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE)
Reviews Morgan, Edwin (1983), The Politics of Poetry: review of Yeats, Eliot, Pound and the Politics of Poetry, in Hearn, Sheila G. (ed.), Cencrastus'' No. 12, Spring 1983, p. 44,
References
External links Cairns Craig's Aberdeen University Page