Histories of Scottish literature have tended in recent years to include more women, notably more in the case of the most recent four-volume history which had more space to be generous with. It seems, however, that gradualism in writing the history of Scottish women's writing will not be enough to secure for women a more than vestigial presence in whatever larger stories are being told about either the national or the female canons, at least not till the next millennium. There are valid objections to separatist stories, some of which are put by contributors to this volume, but even if the only justification that can be offered for separatism is that it carves out more space to talk about women's writing, then that seems good enough to be going on with. Nor do the stories that are told about women's writing in this volume ignore its intimate relations with work by men. And reconsideration of the contribution of women to the total achievement of writing in Scotland seems particularly appropriate now, when so many suggestions are being made that individual writers, periods and topics have not been adequately assessed. From early Gaelic women poets and Mary, Queen of Scots to the eighteenth-century travellers and Joanna Baillie, from the role of women in balladry to the long and impressive tradition of Scottish women novelists who seem at last to be coming into their own, Scottish literature presents a terrain which has not hitherto been mapped in a relief which shows where its women came from, and the real contribution they make to Scottish culture and culture generally.

The relative absence of women from the official histories of Scottish writing is one thing. Perhaps more alarming and more in need of protest is the regular exclusion of Scottish women from general histories and anthologies of women's writing. Mrs Oliphant, Susan Ferrier and now some twentieth-century writers are recognised but it is taking far too long for many others to find their places. Recent feminist activity in Romantic studies has forced interest again in a number of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Scottish women poets, notably Joanna Baillie, but a huge number of women writers from Scotland still remain as ladies in waiting. For example, the influence of the Norton Anthologies on what gets taught in institutions of higher education is simply undeniable.