Lewis Grassic Gibbon (1901-35) is the pen-name of James Leslie Mitchell. Born and brought up in the rich farming land of North East Scotland, he was a prolific writer of novels, short stories and essays and had seventeen full-length books published before his untimely death at the age of thirty-three. He is today recognised as one of the outstanding figures in Scottish literature, most famous for A Scots Quair, the trilogy of novels which begins with Sunset Song.