Edwin Muir

Kirsten Matthews (University of Glasgow)

Ed. by J. Derrick McClure, University of Aberdeen
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.3: Scottish Writing and Culture, 400-present.
Vol. editors: Kate Ash-Irisarri (University of Edinburgh), Daniel Cook (University of Dundee), Gina Lyle (University of Glasgow), J. Derrick McClure (University of Aberdeen), Andrew Radford (University of Glasgow)

Dates

Born 15 May 1887
Died 3 Jan 1959
Activity 1907-1959

Places

Born in Scotland
Active in Scotland

Activities

Primary

Poet

Resources

Muir's Works

Save to Bookshelf

Edwin Muir is best known as a poet and essayist. He identified himself variously as Orcadian, Scot and European. He was a part of the Scottish Literary Renaissance of the 1920s, actively praising the early Scots poems of Hugh MacDiarmid and contributing to journals such as

The Scottish Chapbook

and

The Scottish Nation

. He was also deeply influenced by the broader European literary scene, and his poetic career began in earnest while he was living in Germany. Along with his wife, Willa, he produced the first translations of Kafka’s

The Castle

The Trial

and

America

, and of Broch’s

The Sleepwalkers

; he and Willa were instrumental in introducing these works to the English-speaking intellectual community. He was praised by T. S. Eliot, and began his career as a critic writing for A. R.…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

4122 words

Citation: Matthews, Kirsten. "Edwin Muir". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 12 May 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3243, accessed 24 April 2024.]

View recommended reading for this article

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here