George Mackay Brown

(born 17 October 1921 - died April 1996) - Stromness, Orkney

George Mackay Brown, who died in 1996, was one of Scotland's finest and most prolific novelists. He was born in Stromness, Orkney, in 1921, and lived there for most of his life, drawing inspiration from its past, people, and landscapes, to create his spare, beautifully written fiction and poetry. His father was a postman and tailor; his mother was a native Gaelic speaker from Sutherland.

Poor health in his teens and twenties meant he did not stray far from Orkney apart from a formative period at Newbattle College near Edinburgh followed by a degree at Edinburgh University. After taking his degree, he returned to Orkney and began to have his work published in 1954.

Mackay Brown's friendship with the composer, Peter Maxwell Davies, was a fruitful one. Together, they collaborated on over 30 pieces of work: song cycles, operas, and music for plays celebrating Orkney’s distinctive cultural heritage. One of Mackay Brown’s last novels, Beside the Ocean of Time, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1994. His autobiography, For the Islands I Sing, was published shortly after his death.

Bibliography

• The Storm and Other Poems, 1954
• Loaves and Fishes, 1959,
• The Year of the Whale, 1965
• The Five Voyages of Arnor, 1966
• A Calendar of Love and Other Stories, 1967
• A Time to Keep: and Other Stories - 1969
• Fisherman with Ploughs: A Poem Cycle, 1971
• Lifeboat and Other Poems, 1971
• Greenvoe - 1972
• Magnus - 1973
• Hawkfall - 1974
• The Two Fiddlers: Tales from Orkney, 1974
• The Sun's Net, 1976
• Winterfold, 1976
• Pictures in the Cave, 1977
• Selected Poems, 1977
• Witch and Other Stories, 1977
• Under Brinkie’s Brae - 1979
• Six Lives of Fankle the Cat - 1980
• Andrina and Other Stories, 1983
• Time in Red Coat, 1984
• Three Plays, 1984
• Christmas Poems, 1984
• Keepers of the House, 1986
• The Golden Bird: Two Orkney Stories, 1987
• Two Poems for Kenna, 1988
• The Masked Fishermen and Other Stories, 1989
• The Wreck of the Archangel, 1989
• Brodgar Poems, 1991
• The Sea-Kings’s Daughter, 1991
• The Lost Village, 1992
• Vinland, 1992
• Rockpools and Daffodils: An Orcadian Diary, 1979-91, 1992
• The Sea and the Tower, 1994
• Beside the Ocean of Time - 1994
• Winter Tales - 1995
• Water, 1996
• Following a Lark, 1996
• Orkney Pictures and Poems, 1996
• Selected Poems, 1954-1992, 1996
• The Island of the Women and Other Stories, 1998
• For the Islands I Sing - An Autobiography - 1998
• The Rose Tree, 2001
• Travellers, 2002
• Letters from Hamnavoe - 2002
• The Son of the Fisherman, 2002
• The Collected Poems of George MacKay Brown - 2005

Books about George Mackay Brown

• Scotnotes: Greenvoe - 2002
• Keeping the Sources Pure: The Making of George Mackay Brown - Sabine Schmid - 2003
• Interrogation of Silence - Rowena Murray & Brian Murray - 2004
• The Life of George Mackay Brown: Through the Eye of a Needle - Maggie Fergusson - 2006
• Interrogation of Silence: The Writings of George Mackay Brown - 2008