Hugh MacDiarmid
(born August 1892 – died September 1978) – Langholm, Dumfries & Galloway
Hugh MacDiarmid was just one of the many pseudonyms of Christopher Murray Grieve, from Langholm in Dumfries and Galloway. A journalist with a strong political sense, he helped found the National Party of Scotland (later the SNP). He left School in 1910, and after serving in the Medical Corps in WWI, he returned to journalism and began to edit and publish a series of literary magazines. Northern Numbers was a poetry collection, while in Scottish Chapbook he first used the name ‘Hugh MacDiarmid’.
MacDiarmid was an exponent of the new Scottish modernism, and, with authors such as Lewis Grassic Gibbon, of the new Scottish literary renaissance. MacDiarmid wrote a series of articles with Gibbon on this new renaissance, a rejection of the 19th century sentimentalisation of Scottish literature.
His first published book was Annals of the Five Senses; his long poem A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle is his most famous work.
Other pseudonyms used by MacDiarmid included Isobel Guthrie, A.K. Laidlaw, Arthur Leslie, Gillechriosd Mac a'Greidhir and James Maclaren. He wrote in Gaelic (and did several Gaelic to English translations), Lallans and English, particularly in later life. Poet Edwin Muir was particularly opposed to his use of Lallans, believing that "Scotland can only create a national literature by writing in English".
MacDiarmid died in September 1978 in Biggar in the Scottish Borders.
Key Titles
- Annals Of The Five Senses And Other Stories, Sketches And Plays
This is a collection of psychological studies. Some of the studies in this book are based upon the author's own life, and others explore both male and female viewpoints. The text also includes short stories, short plays, and a ballet scenario. - Lucky Poet: A Self-Study In Literature And Political Ideas
First published in 1943, this book had a minatory subtitle: 'A Self-Study in Literature and Political Ideas, being the Autobiography of Hugh MacDiarmid'. It has more in common with Coleridge's 'Biographia Literaria' than with conventional memoirs. - The Raucle Tongue: Hitherto Uncollected Essays, Journalism And Interviews
This title is part of the 14-volume MacDiarmid 2000 programme which was launched by Carcanet on the centenary of his birth in 1992. The purpose of the programme is to bring into print all of Hugh MacDiarmid's major writings - The Raucle Tongue: Hitherto Uncollected Prose
Bibliography
- Annals of the Five Senses - 1923
- Sangschaw - 1925
- Pennywheep - 1926
- A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle - 1926
- To Circumjack Cencrastus - 1930
- Complete Poems - 1976
Biographies of Hugh MacDiarmid
- Lucky Poet by Hugh MacDiarmid - 1946
- The Company I've Kept by Hugh MacDiarmid - 1966
- Hugh MacDiarmid by Bob Purdie - 2004