Alexander Gray

Poetic translations form a remarkably extensive and impressive section of modern literature in Scots, nearly every major poet from MacDiarmid and Soutar onwards including some exercises in translation as part of their output. Sir Alexander Gray is unusual in that his poetry consists of two quite distinct bodies of work, original poems in English and translations in Scots; and that it is almost entirely on the latter group, quantitatively the more substantial, that his reputation rests.

Gray was a scholar of international experience, studying at the Universities of Edinburgh, Göttingen and Paris. After a period of work in the civil service, he was appointed in 1921 to the chair of Political Economy at Aberdeen University, and