Qualla: Writers' Museum https://qualla.com/writers-museum en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:17 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/w/writers-museum-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Writers' Museum https://qualla.com/writers-museum Writers' Museum: Introduction https://qualla.com/writers-museum/ Photo credit Magnus Hagdorn from UK, CC BY-SA 2.0. Surely, chess playing is a sad waste of brains. The line is Walter Scott's, recorded by his biographer J. G. Lockhart, and it explains why a chessboard and chessmen once owned by the writer now sit in a glass case in Edinburgh's Writers' Museum. Scott as a boy played chess. As he grew older, he decided he would rather learn languages, and he stopped. The board and pieces in the museum are the residue of that choice: a hobby abandoned because the writer was already drafting Waverley in his head. The museum is full of small objects like this, things that reveal their owners by the way the owners refused to use them.

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Image: Magnus Hagdorn from UK | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/w/writers-museum-wp/gcvw-writers-museum-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Writers' Museum: Lady Stair's House https://qualla.com/writers-museum/ Photo credit Jeremy Keith, CC BY 2.0. The museum lives inside Lady Stair's House, a seventeenth-century townhouse tucked into Lady Stair's Close, a narrow alley off the Lawnmarket end of the Royal Mile. The building was originally a private residence; in the early twentieth century it was converted into a museum dedi...

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Image: Jeremy Keith | CC BY 2.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/w/writers-museum-wp/gcvw-writers-museum-lady-stairs-house.mp3 0:06 2 full Writers' Museum: Burns and a Carnival of Toasts https://qualla.com/writers-museum/ Photo credit Alexander Nasmyth, Public domain. On display is an invitation card to the Scottish Burns Club's Seventy-First Annual Supper, held at Napier University's Craiglockhart Campus on Saturday 29 January 1994. The menu: egg mayonnaise, scotch broth, haggis, roast turkey, pear melba, coffee. The toast list runs the lengt...

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Image: Alexander Nasmyth | Public domain

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/w/writers-museum-wp/gcvw-writers-museum-burns-and-a-carnival-of-toasts.mp3 0:06 3 full Writers' Museum: Scott's Slippers https://qualla.com/writers-museum/ Photo credit Stefan Schäfer, Lich, CC BY-SA 3.0. In December 1830, Lady Honoria Louisa Cadogan and her daughters Lady Augusta Sarah and Lady Honoria Louisa visited Walter Scott at Abbotsford. They noticed his uncomfortable-looking slippers. After they got home, they sent him new ones, woven in pink and blue wool, lined with sil...

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Image: Stefan Schäfer, Lich | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/w/writers-museum-wp/gcvw-writers-museum-scotts-slippers.mp3 0:06 4 full Writers' Museum: Stevenson Travels with a Donkey https://qualla.com/writers-museum/ Photo credit Robert Louis Stevenson, Public domain. Robert Louis Stevenson took a copy of George Borrow's The Bible in Spain with him on his 1878 walking trip through the Cevennes mountains in southern France, along with a sleeping bag and the donkey, Modestine, who carried his luggage. Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes was th...

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Image: Robert Louis Stevenson | Public domain

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/w/writers-museum-wp/gcvw-writers-museum-stevenson-travels-with-a-donkey.mp3 0:06 5 full Writers' Museum: The Anonymous Paper Sculpture https://qualla.com/writers-museum/ Photo credit Stephencdickson, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 2011, an unknown artist began leaving intricate paper sculptures at literary venues across Edinburgh: at the National Library of Scotland, the Scottish Poetry Library, the Filmhouse, the Storytelling Centre. Each came with a note declaring support for libraries, books, words, ...

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Image: Stephencdickson | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/w/writers-museum-wp/gcvw-writers-museum-the-anonymous-paper-sculpture.mp3 0:06 6 full