Edwin Muir

Edwin Muir was an Orcadian poet, born in Deerness, who travelled widely throughout Europe and who’s political views ran contrary to many Scottish writers of his generation. Muir moved to Glasgow in 1914, aged just 14, and within a few short years his parents and two brothers died in the city. Muir idolised his Orkney childhood, in comparison to his harsh life in Glasgow. In 1919 he married writer Willa Anderson, and the couple moved to London.

In the early 1920s Edwin and Willa lived in Prague, Dresden, Salzburg and Vienna, before returning to the UK. Together they worked on translations of a number of European writers, including Franz Kafka and Hermann Broch. Muir published seven volumes of poetry, and a number of controversial essays on Scottish nationalism and identity. He felt that in order to develop a Scottish literature, writers should write in English and not Scots.

He held a number of academic posts, including Warden of Newbattle Abbey College, and in 1955 became Norton Professor of English at Harvard University. Edwin Muir died in Cambridge in 1959, and is buried in the village of Swaffham Prior.