Stevenson, Principal Tulloch and Scottish History

On 6 September 1880 Robert Louis Stevenson, staying with his family at Strathpeffer, met John Tulloch, Principal of St Mary's College, St Andrews. Stevenson talked about his deep interest in Scottish history and a plan to write a history of Scotland since the Union of 1707. Tulloch, who was himself interested in Scottish history and had plans himself to write a history of eighteenth-century Scotland, strongly approved of Stevenson's idea. Initially Stevenson pursued the project, but within a year he turned instead to writing historical fiction set in eighteenth-century Scotland. Tulloch also began work on his history but, unlike Stevenson, he did not abandon the project and worked on it to end of his life. Both men also unsuccessfully sought positions in the field of Scottish history, Stevenson as Professor of History and Constitutional Law at Edinburgh University and Tulloch as Historiographer Royal in Scotland. Stevenson's failure to win the post confirmed him in his career as writer of Scottish historical fiction but Tulloch's failure perhaps encouraged him to keep his Scottish history project largely on the backburner so that its only outcome was a series of lectures on the topic of ‘The Revival of Letters in Scotland in the Eighteenth Century’. Never published, their only surviving only record is summaries in local newspapers. Their shared passionate interest came to a subdued end for Tulloch and a triumphant one for Stevenson.