Margery Palmer McCulloch – författare

This is the story of a literary marriage. It tells of the partnership between Edwin and Willa Muir, two intellectuals from small town Scottish backgrounds and their discovery of Europe in the years after the first and second world wars. It tells us about the cultural, social, and political issues of those dynamic and difficult years and much else, in intimate detail, about their own personal struggles. Edwin Muir was to become a leading poet in the twentieth century Scottish literary renaissance, but to make a living the couple also worked as translators of modern German literature, including key works by Hermann Broch and, most famously, Franz Kafka. They were intimate with many of the leading writers of their time, both at home and abroad, and these contacts, and their travels in Europe gave them a special and sometimes painful insight into the trials of the twentieth century. Dr Margery McCulloch's study draws on personal travel and a wealth of new sources from private correspondence, publishers' archives, the recollections of friends, and the diaries, unpublished journals, and autobiographical memoirs of Edwin and Willa themselves. This is the fullest account of the couple's life and times together during a long and loving marriage, not without its difficulties as Willa struggled to find proper acknowledgement of her translation skills, and space for her own creativity as a novelist in the shadow of her own ill health and Edwin's growing status as a major modern poet.

This innovative book proposes the expansion of the existing idea of an interwar Scottish Renaissance movement to include its international significance as a Scottish literary modernism interacting with the intellectual and artistic ideas of European modernism as well as responding to the challenges of the Scottish cultural and political context.Topics range from the revitalisation of the Scots vernacular as an avant-garde literary language in the 1920s and the interaction of literature and politics in the 1930s to the fictional re-imagining of the Highlands, the response of women writers to a changing modern world and the manifestations of a late modernism in the 1940s and 1950s. Writers featured include Hugh MacDiarmid, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Neil M. Gunn, Edwin and Willa Muir, Catherine Carswell, Sydney Goodsir Smith and Sorley MacLean.Key Features*The first study of a Scottish modernism extending in its impact to the 1950s and drawing on influences from British and European modernism*Original perspectives on the literature of the period through discussion of a range of writers and writing genres *Detailed consideration of the work of women writers in the context of modernism and in their response to social change*A contribution to the expansion of the idea of modernism in its focus both on the modernist artist's role in social and national renewal and on writing from the peripheries of small town, rural and island cultures in contrast to metropolitan culture

Hugh MacDiarmid is widely considered the most significant Scottish poet since Robert Burns and the major literary force in twentieth-century Scottish culture. His poetry is both compelling in its intellectual challenge and captivating in its lyrical beauty. This book explores the principal thematic and aesthetic preoccupations in MacDiarmid's work, relating his poetry to key national and international concerns in modern culture and politics. It offers a vital updating of MacDiarmid scholarship through contributions by leading scholars of the modern period which provide a contextual and interpretive guide to this challenging writer. All of MacDiarmid's major poetic works are examined in addition to a representative selection of his diverse output in other genres, from journalism to shorter fiction, autobiography and political polemic. His poetry and his place in the cultural history of Scottish, British and international modernism will be contemporised through consideration of his significance from a European, transatlantic and ecological global perspective. This collection of essays on MacDiarmid will draw on the creative and discursive writings made newly available through the recent publication of previously uncollected work. Key features:* Updates and internationalises MacDiarmid studies* Provides informed analysis and contextualisation of MacDiarmid's poetry through close readings of texts* Utilises recently published MacDiarmid material* Contributes to a re-drawing of the map of international literary modernism

Hugh MacDiarmid is widely considered the most significant Scottish poet since Robert Burns and the major literary force in twentieth-century Scottish culture. His poetry is both compelling in its intellectual challenge and captivating in its lyrical beauty. This book explores the principal thematic and aesthetic preoccupations in MacDiarmid's work, relating his poetry to key national and international concerns in modern culture and politics. It offers a vital updating of MacDiarmid scholarship through contributions by leading scholars of the modern period which provide a contextual and interpretive guide to this challenging writer. All of MacDiarmid's major poetic works are examined in addition to a representative selection of his diverse output in other genres, from journalism to shorter fiction, autobiography and political polemic. His poetry and his place in the cultural history of Scottish, British and international modernism will be contemporised through consideration of his significance from a European, transatlantic and ecological global perspective. This collection of essays on MacDiarmid will draw on the creative and discursive writings made newly available through the recent publication of previously uncollected work. Key features:* Updates and internationalises MacDiarmid studies* Provides informed analysis and contextualisation of MacDiarmid's poetry through close readings of texts* Utilises recently published MacDiarmid material* Contributes to a re-drawing of the map of international literary modernism