This chapter explores both the Scottish dimension of MacDonald’s biography and the ways Scotland is reflected in his writing. During his lifetime, Scotland itself underwent greater changes than the simple phrase ‘Victorian Scotland’ implies. In addition, MacDonald found himself in the position of feeling both intimately Scottish but also a distanced observer of the Scottish scene. His sense of his native land was compounded with his memories of his own early years there and with his reverence for Scotland’s previous literary achievements, particularly in the works of Burns, Scott, and Hogg. Scotland’s distinctiveness – indeed, its otherness – in the minds of his readers provided him with a means of articulating his own distinctive vision of reality, a vision which sought to relate the mundane world of Victorian Britain with the larger spiritual world of which (in his eyes) it was part. His fiction, therefore, encompassed both realism and fantasy; Scotland helped him bring the two into a fruitful relationship. By surveying the Scottish novels he wrote throughout his career, we can attain a more truthful understanding of his idiosyncratic contribution to nineteenth-century fiction.