Collins Encyclopedia of Scotland

Collins Encyclopaedia of Scotland is a reference work published by Harper Collins, edited by the husband and wife team, John and Julia Keay.

Scots had provided the impetus for a number of well-known references works, Chambers Dictionary and Encyclopædia Britannica amongst them (the latter still uses a Scottish thistle as a logo), but hitherto there had been no general purpose Scottish encyclopaedia.

The encyclopaedia took seven years to compile and has appeared in two editions. The first edition, published in 1994, contained about a million words, nearly five hundred illustrations, and had 126 contributors, ranging from Derick Thomson to David Steel, from Alan Bold to Neil MacCormick and from Joy Hendry to Sir William Macpherson of Cluny. It has four thousand individual entries, and an index indicating further references in other articles.

In the original edition, the first entry is Aaron Scotus, and the last on the marquisate of Zetland (the only Z entry).

The aim seems to have been to have reasonably brief entries on most topics, but subjects that get lengthier ones, include Scotland's major cities (including the traditional city of Perth), association football and rugby in Scotland, the Scottish Gaelic language, Scots law etc. A wide variety of topics are dealt with, including figures from science, literature, philosophy, sport and history.

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