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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 54 Collections and/or Records:

Letters to Mr and Mrs Burt, 16 July 1935 ; 2 January 1951

 File
Identifier: Coll-2124/1/4
Scope and Contents

One letter from "Chris" [Hugh MacDiarmid], Whalsay, to "My dear Burt", on poems, criticism, publications and getting back to Scots, 16 July 1939. Manuscript. 2pp.


One letter from "C. M. Grieve" [Hugh MacDiarmid], Dungavel, to "Dear Mrs Burt", on seeing the "In Memoriam" notice in the Scotsman, 2 January 1951. Manuscript. 1p.

Dates: 16 July 1935 ; 2 January 1951

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

"Lloyd George and the Highlands", c 1927-1929

 Item
Identifier: Coll-2124/4/1
Scope and Contents

"Lloyd George and the Highlands", by a Special Correspondent [Hugh MacDiarmid], manuscript, 7pp, c. 1927-1929.

Dates: c 1927-1929

"Londonisation Denounced", "No Episcopacy for Scotland", "Notable Events", "The Little Rebel", undated

 Item
Identifier: Coll-2124/3/10
Scope and Contents

"Londonisation Denounced", "No Episcopacy for Scotland", "Notable Events", and "The Little Rebel", manuscript, pen, 3pp and fragment.

Dates: Other: undated

Manuscript translation of Harry Martinson's Aniara, by Hugh MacDiarmid, after 1956

 Item
Identifier: Coll-2124/7/1
Scope and Contents

"Aniara", translated by MacDiarmid from the Swedish (Aniara : en revy om människan i tid och rum by Harry Martinson, 1904-1978), a poem of science fiction first published in 1956, original manuscript, pen, 106pp.

Dates: after 1956

Maurice Lindsay Papers

 Fonds
Identifier: Coll-56
Scope and Contents The Maurice Lindsay Papers contain poetry notebooks; drafts, manuscripts and typescripts; radio scripts; incoming correspondence and some carbon replies; articles by Lindsay; C.M. Grieve manuscripts; and, outgoing correspondence. Within the Maurice Lindsay Papers are up to three boxes containing private and personal letters (dated 1943-46) between Lindsay and his future wife and which are not available for general study until after the deaths of the writer and recipient without their express...
Dates: 1943-1977

Mimeographed typescript of the 1962 International Writers Conference in Edinburgh, 20-24 August 1962

 Item — Box CLX-A-1591
Identifier: Coll-1848/20-0086
Scope and Contents Complete mimeographed typescript of the entire proceedings of the 1962 International Writers Conference, held on 20-24 August 1962 at the McEwan Hall, Edinburgh, during that year's Edinburgh Festival.The conference's list of delegates included such luminaries as Norman Mailer, Colin McInnes, Henry Miller, Alexander Trocchi, Mary McCarthy and a host of other over 70 writter in all. The career of William Burroughs was effectively launched by his contributions to the event, on the...
Dates: 20-24 August 1962

"Moral Rearmament", 27 February 1964

 Item
Identifier: Coll-2124/3/5
Scope and Contents

"Moral Rearmament", manuscript, pen, 23pp. MacDiarmid’s speech to Aberdeen University Literary Society in debate on motion deploring Edinburgh International Festival ‘"happenings", 27 February 1964.

Dates: 27 February 1964

Obituary of Willie Gallacher , 1965

 Item
Identifier: Coll-2124/3/4
Scope and Contents

[Gallacher, Willie] Obituary of Willie Gallacher (1881-1965), trade unionist and activist, masnucript, pen, 3pp.

Dates: 1965

Papers of Andrew Graham Grieve

 Fonds — Multiple Containers
Identifier: Coll-1725
Scope and Contents

The archive is composed of correspondence, family papers, printed matter and newspaper cuttings, literary works, and diary.

Dates: 1883-1965