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… Susan Schwartz, without whose herculean efforts this book would simply not exist.

… Jennifer Prior, copyeditor, one of the normally unsung heroes of book production, and

… the many other people who have contributed so much to this book: Ann Fraser, for details of the Fraser of Lovat family tree; Elaine Smith, for the ring patterns; Stephen and Anne McKenzie, and Karen Jackson, for the photographs of Castle Leod, and all the other helpful souls whose many contributions have made this book what it is (i.e., large).

Thank you all!

Diana Gabaldon

http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~gatti/gabaldon/gabaldon.html

For Jackie Cantor,

My companion on this long Outlandish journey

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Prologue

PART ONE: Synopses

Outlander

Dragonfly in Amber

Voyager

Drums of Autumn

PART TWO: Characters

Where Characters Come From: Mushrooms, Onions, and Hard Nuts

Cast of Characters

I Get Letters …

Horoscope Reading for James Fraser, Horoscope Chart

Horoscope Reading for Claire Beauchamp Randall Fraser, Horoscope Chart

Magic, Medicine, and White Ladies

PART THREE: Family Trees

A Genealogical Note

PART FOUR: Comprehensive Glossary and Pronunciation Guide

A Very Brief Guide to Gaelic Grammar

Comprehensive Glossary of Foreign Terms (including British slang)

PART FIVE: Outlandish Web Sites and Online Venues

The Web Sites

The Diana Gabaldon Home Page

LOL—The Ladies (and Lads) of Lallybroch

Through the Stones

The Outlandish Time Line

Clan Outlandish on AOL

The Free Gallery of Authors’ Voices

CompuServe Readers and Writers Ink Group

PART SIX: Research

Researching Historical Fiction: Hot Dogs and Beans

Botanical Medicine: Don’t Try This at Home

Penicillin Online: A Writer’s Thread

PART SEVEN: Where Titles Come From (and Other Matters of General Interest)

Outlander vs. Cross Stitch

The Gabaldon Theory of Time Travel

PART EIGHT: The View from Lallybroch: Objects of Vertue, Objects of Use

Lallybroch

“Arma virumque cano”

PART NINE: Frequently Asked Questions

Answers

PART TEN: Controversy

Communication

PART ELEVEN: Work in Progress: Excerpts of Future Books

The Fiery Cross

King, Farewell:

“Surgeon’s Steel”

The Cannibal’s Art

Writing and Real Life

Annotated Bibliography

Eighteenth Century

Scotland

Medicine (Including all Herbals)

African Cultures

Ghosts and Ghost Stories

Literature

Language Resources

Magic

Natural History Guides and Resources

North Carolina

Food and Cookery

Native American Cultures and History, Etc.

Rather Odd Books

Miscellaneous

Appendixes

I: Errata

II: Gaelic (Gaidhlig) Resources

III: Poems and Quotations

IV: Roots: A Brief Primer on Genealogical Research

V: A Brief Discography of Celtic Music

VI: Foreign Editions, Audiotapes, and Strange, Strange Covers

VII: The Methadone List

PROLOGUE

Well, it was all an accident, is what it was. I wasn’t trying to be published; I wasn’t even going to show it to anyone. I just wanted to write a book—any kind of book.

Not actually any kind of book. Fiction. See, I’m a storyteller. I can’t take any particular credit for this—I was born that way. When my sister and I were very young and shared a bedroom, we stayed up far into the night, nearly every night, telling enormous, convoluted, continuing stories, with casts of thousands (like I said, I was born with this).

Still, even though I knew I was a storyteller from an early age, I didn’t know quite what to do about it. Writing fiction is not a clearly marked career path, after all. It’s not like law, where you do go to school for X years, pass an exam, and bing! you can charge people two hundred dollars an hour to listen to your expert opinions (my sister’s a lawyer). Writers mostly make it up as they go along, and there is no guarantee that if you do certain things, you will get published. Still less is there any guarantee that you’ll make a living at it.

Now, I come from a very conservative background (morally and