Books of Fiction about Juniper Green
As the JG300 project gathered momentum through 2006 interest was aroused by the discovery of two books of nineteenth century fiction: Misty Morning and The Dark Night. Both books were published anonymously and thought to have veiled references to Juniper Green. The books were found lurking on the shelves of the Scottish National Library and copies were obtained to find out what social history they might reveal.
John Scott of Currie Local History Society found the following extract from an undated and unnamed newspaper which from the text must have been published around 1900. It is quoted below for interest since it is known that the books were published around 1857/8:
"A very interesting visitor was in the locality this week in the person of Mr Finnie of Glasgow, a grandson of Jamie Tamson, the Kinleith Poet. The poet's daughter married a Mr Archibald Finnie and the present Mr Finnie is her son. He is remembered quite well by the older inhabitants as the Johnny Finnie of their youthful days. In conversation with Daniel McNeil who has a good knowledge of the poet's history he stated that he has in his possession most of his grandfather's relics, including the punch bowl, walking stick, portrait in oil, etc, all of which were presentations to the poet by his admirers. It is interesting to note that it was Mr Finnie's older brother Thomas who was the author of the book entitled The Misty Morning, a book published about 40 years ago, anonymously, with local connections, the authorship of which was wrongly attributed to a Dr Cunningham, then of Currie, who suffered in consequence."
The books by Thomas Finnie have been reviewed for this website and can be found at the end of this introduction.