This is a comprehensive study of all Gunn's extant novels (including an early unpublished example), and a detailed account of the literary context within which Gunn saw himself working. Close textual criticism is supplemented with reference to Gunn's poetry, short stories, essays and letters and many of his key sources are revealed. Price describes Gunn's early literary relationship with the Celtic Twilight writers of the late-19th century, and his subsequent strong influence from Proust and Eliot, and argues that Gunn was much more literarily conscious than has generally been believed. He considers Gunn's complex reation to World War II and his views on the nature of freedom, and traces Gunn's increasing interest in the limitatons and loci of human compassion in his later novels. Including plot summaries and a radical re-reading of the novels fron the mid-1940s onwards, this is a wide-ranging and approachable guide to work of Neil M. Gunn. It is intended for students of Scottish literature from sixth form upwards, as well as the general reader.