Set in mid-19th century Ayrshire, in the fictitious town of Barbie the novel The House with the Green Shutters (1901) describes the struggles of a proud and taciturn carrier, John Gourlay, against the spiteful comments and petty machinations of the envious and idle villagers of Barbie (the "bodies"). The sudden return after fifteen years' absence of the ambitious merchant, James Wilson, son of a mole-catcher, leads to commercial competition against which Gourlay has trouble responding.

George Douglas Brown (1869 –1902) was a Scottish novelist, best known for his highly influential realist novel The House with the Green Shutters (1901). The novel gives a strongly outlined picture of the harder and less genial aspects of Scottish life and character, and was regarded as a useful corrective to the more roseate presentations of the kailyard school of J. M. Barrie and Ian Maclaren.