Scottish dramatists and playwrights

Archibald Joseph Cronin (19 July 1896 – 6 January 1981), known as A. J. Cronin, was a Scottish physician and novelist. His best-known novel is The Citadel (1937), about a Scottish doctor who serves in a Welsh mining village before achieving success in London, where he becomes disillusioned about the venality and incompetence of some doctors. Cronin knew both areas, as a medical inspector of mines and as a doctor in Harley Street. The book exposed unfairness and malpractice in British medicine and helped to inspire the National Health Service. The Stars Look Down, set in the North East of England, is another of his best-selling novels inspired by his work among miners. Both novels have been filmed, as have Hatter's Castle, The Keys of the Kingdom and The Green Years. His 1935 novella Country Doctor inspired a long-running BBC radio and TV series, Dr. Finlay's Casebook (1962–1971), set in the 1920s. There was a follow-up series in 1993–1996.

Gavin Greig (1856–1914) was a Scottish folksong collector, playwright, novelist and teacher.
He edited James Scott Skinner's biggest collection of music, The Harp and Claymore Collection, providing harmonies for Skinner's compositions, and he was jointly responsible for compiling The Greig-Duncan Folk Song Collection, with the Rev J.B. Duncan (1848–1917). A selection from this collection of over 3,000 songs and tunes was published in 1925. Two volumes were published in 1981-1982, but the full collection, in eight volumes, was only finally published between 1981 and 2002.He was also the author of the Doric Scots play Mains Wooin', which was very popular in the North East of Scotland before World War II. His novels include Morrison Gray: or, Life in a Buchan Schoolhouse serialised in the Peterhead Sentinel between May 1896 and January 1897, The Hermit o' Gight serialised in the Buchan Observer between 1898 and 1899. and the historical romance Logie o' Buchan published in Aberdeen in 1899.Greig was related to Robert Burns on his mother's side and to Edvard Grieg on his father's side.

William Archer (23 September 1856 – 27 December 1924) was a Scottish author, theatre critic, and English spelling reformer based, for most of his career, in London. He was an early advocate of the plays of Henrik Ibsen, and a friend and advocate of George Bernard Shaw.

Cecil Philip Taylor (6 November 1929 – 9 December 1981) usually credited as C. P. Taylor, was a Scottish playwright. He wrote almost 80 plays during his 16 years as a professional playwright, including several for radio and television. He also made a number of documentary programmes for the BBC. His plays tended to draw on his Jewish background and his Socialist Marxist viewpoint, and to be written in dialect.

John Patrick Byrne (6 January 1940 – 30 November 2023) was a Scottish playwright, screenwriter, artist and designer. He wrote The Slab Boys Trilogy, plays which explore working-class life in Scotland, and the TV dramas Tutti Frutti and Your Cheatin' Heart. Byrne was also a painter, printmaker and scenic designer.

Elizabeth MacKintosh (25 July 1896 – 13 February 1952), known by the pen name Josephine Tey, was a Scottish author. Her novel The Daughter of Time, a detective work investigating the death of the Princes in the Tower, was chosen by the Crime Writers' Association in 1990 as the greatest crime novel of all time. Her first play Richard of Bordeaux, written under another pseudonym, Gordon Daviot, starred John Gielgud in its successful West End run.