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MacDiarmid, Hugh, 1892-1978 (Scottish poet)

 Person

Dates

  • Existence: 11 August 1892 - 9 September 1978

Biography

Hugh MacDiarmid, the pseudonym of Christopher Murray Grieve, was born on 11 August 1892 in Langholm, Dumfriesshire. He was educated at Langholm Academy, then at Broughton Junior Student Centre in Edinburgh prior to studying at Edinburgh University. After wartime service with the Royal Army Medical Corps in 1915-20, in Salonika, Italy, and France, he became a journalist in Montrose, Angus. There he worked for the Montrose Review and edited three issues of the first post-war Scottish verse anthology Northern Numbers (1921-23). In 1922 he founded the journal Scottish Chapbook, advocating the revival of Scottish literature. In 1929, he worked on Vox in London, and in 1930 was living in Liverpool, working as a public relations officer. Another spell in London followed. In 1933 Grieve moved to Whalsay in the Shetland Islands, staying there until 1941. In these wartime years, he worked as a manual labourer on Clydeside, 1941-43, and then on British merchant ships engaged in estuarial duties, 1943-45. After the Second World War, he lived in Glasgow, Strathaven in Lanarkshire, and then from 1951 in Biggar on the upper Clyde.

As a poet, MacDiarmid was the pre-eminent Scottish literary figure of the 20th century, and was the leader of the Scottish literary renaissance, the movement that sought to revitalize Scottish writing by fusing the heritage of the medieval makers and an international, modernist outlook. In the 1920s, MacDiarmid rejected English in favour of Lallans, a hybrid or ‘synthetic’ Scots, in which he wrote his masterpieces Sangschaw (1925), Penny Wheep (1926), A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle (1926), and To Circumjack Cencrastus (1930). Soon recognized as the major Scots-language poet since Burns, MacDiarmid inspired other poets such as Sydney Goodsir Smith and William Soutar to take up Scots as a literary medium.

In the 1930s, however, MacDiarmid returned to English in Stony Limits (1934) and Second Hymn to Lenin (1935), rejecting the lyricism of his early volumes in a favour of an austere, philosophical diction. In his post-war poetry, he increasingly shunned the personal and subjective in favour of open-ended epics such as In Memoriam James Joyce (1955) and The Kind of Poetry I Want (1961) which celebrated political and scientific materialism. MacDiarmid continue to inspire younger Scottish poets and in the 1950s and 1960s was at the heart of the group, including Sydney Goodsir Smith, Norman MacCaig and George Mackay Brown, which met in Edinburgh's legendary literary pub, Milne's Bar.

MacDiarmid combined literary and political activism. He was a founding member of the National Party of Scotland (one of the predecessors of the current Scottish National Party) in 1928 but left in 1933 due to his Marxist-Leninist views. He joined the Communist Party the following year only to be expelled in 1938 for his nationalist sympathies. He would subsequently stand as a parliamentary candidate for both the SNP (1945), and British Communist Party (1964) after re-joining the party in 1957. As a follower of the Scottish revolutionary socialist John Maclean, he saw no contradiction between international socialism and the nationalist vision of a Scottish workers' republic, but this ensured a fraught relationship with organized political parties.

He had a daughter, Christine, and a son, Walter, by his first wife Peggy Skinner. He had a son, James Michael Trevlyn, known as Michael, by his second wife Valda Trevlyn (1906-1989). MacDiarmid continued to write well into the 1970s but died of cancer in Edinburgh on 9 September 1978.

Source: About Hugh MacDiarmid (2019) https://www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/library-museum-gallery/crc/research-resources/scottish-literature/macdiarmid/macdiarmid [Accessed 20 September 2021]

Found in 5 Collections and/or Records:

Correspondence with F. G. Scott, with enclosed poems, 1932-1957

 Sub-Series
Identifier: Coll-2124/1/2
Scope and Contents Ff. 1-2: Letter from Hugh MacDiarmid to F. G. Scott dated 22/07/1932. Ff. 3-5: Letter from Hugh MacDiarmid to F. G. Scott dated 24/10/1932. Ff. 6-8*: Letter from Hugh MacDiarmid to F. G. Scott dated 19/10/1939. Ff. 9-10: Letter from Hugh MacDiarmid to F. G. Scott dated 20/11/1939. Ff. 11-16: Letter from Hugh MacDiarmid to F. G. Scott dated 07/09/1940. Includes a manuscript text of "Auld Reekie", 5 ff., pencil. F. 17: Letter from...
Dates: 1932-1957

Correspondence with Helen B. Cruickshank, 17 May 1922 - 16 August 1964

 Sub-Series
Identifier: Coll-2124/1/1
Scope and Contents Correspondence between Hugh MacDiarmid and Helen B. Cruickshank, from 17 May 1922 to 16 August 1964 (a few with no date), arranged chronologically, 78 letters, 155 folios.There is also an envelope containing snapshots of Hugh MacDiarmid and family mostly taken by Helen Cruickshank (ff. 159 - 180), and three signed photographs (f. 156: photograph of a bust by sculptor Laurence Bradshaw, f. 157: portrait of Hugh MacDiarmid, and f. 158: photograph of Valda Trevlyn...
Dates: 17 May 1922 - 16 August 1964

"Hugh MacDiarmid: Rebel Poet and Prophet" by Duncan Glen, 1962

 File
Identifier: Coll-2124/6/1
Scope and Contents Four items relating to "Hugh MacDiarmid: Rebel Poet and Prophet" by Duncan Glen (1962): "Rebel Poet and Prophet" by Duncan Glen, manuscript, pen, 7pp; First proof, with Duncan Glen's initials and annotations, 6pp + cover; First revise, with Duncan Glen's initials and annotations, 4pp; Printed booklet, red, signed by Duncan Glen. Copy no. 8. ...
Dates: 1962

Literary Papers of Hugh MacDiarmid collected by Kulgin D. Duval

 Fonds
Identifier: Coll-2124
Scope and Contents Collection of literary papers of Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid (pen name of Christopher Murray Grieve), collected by bookseller and book collector Kulgin D. Duval. They include: Correspondence with other important figures of the Scottish Renaissance such as Helen Cruickshank and Francis G. Scott, as well as Scottish politician Roland E. Muirhead; Manuscripts of individual poems by Hugh...
Dates: 1922-1964

Typescript of "The Kind of Poetry I Want" by Hugh MacDiarmid, 1960-1962

 Item
Identifier: Coll-1848/23-0207
Scope and Contents Ten-page typescript of a section of Hugh MacDiarmid's poem "The Kind of Poetry I Want", presumably the script for a reading from the poem broadcast on the BBC Third Programme on 14 March 1960. The script is enclosed within a first edition of The Kind of Poetry I Want (Edinburgh: K. D. Duval, 1961), inscribed to "Geoffrey Bridson with every high regard and best wishes for 1962, Hugh MacDiarmid". Bridson produced, arranged, and introduced the...
Dates: 1960-1962