The Stickit Minister and Some Common Men

By Samuel Rutherford Crockett

Subjects: Scotland, fiction, Fiction, historical, general, Fiction, Social life and customs, Fiction, short stories (single author)

Description: First published in 1893 this collection of 24 short stories/sketches by S.R.Crockett had mostly been published in magazine form during the previous decade. The stories, many of them set in his native Galloway, were well received by public and critics alike in his own day. He dedicated the first edition 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 whaups are crying – his heart remembers how. This inspired Stevenson to write a poem in response and to comment favourably on the collection ‘The whole book breathes admirably of the soil. ‘The Stickit Minister’ and ‘Heather Lintie’ are two that come near to me particularly. They are drowned in Scotland. They have refreshed me like a visit home.’ From the late 1880’s Crockett wrote regularly for serial magazines. ‘The Stickit Minister and other Common men’ to give it its full title, was compiled out of the many stories he wrote during this time for the Glasgow Penny Weekly, 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. In these stories we see many of the themes and concerns that were to become frequent in his subsequent fiction. An understanding of the rural life and of the particularities of Scottish humour are vital to a true appreciation of this book. This collection shows Crockett at the start of his career, and from this point onwards his success was guaranteed.