I lived from 1887-1959. I was from Scotland, and am in the English category.
Edwin Muir was born on the Orkney island of Wyre in 1887. He spent his early years on of his father's farm, 'The Bu'. A stent with poverty forced the family to move to Glasgow in 1901. The move from the peaceful setting of Orkney to industrialised Glasgow was extremely traumatic for Muir. He later described it as a descent from the innocence of a rural Eden into Hell. Because of hardships, within a few years of their arrival, two of his brothers and both his parents were dead. The remaining siblings chose to go their separate ways and Muir found himself adrift in a large city with little education or prospects. In 1916 he began contributing poetry to a magazine called New Age under the pseudonym 'Edward Moore', and his first book, a volume of short pithy essays on society, politics and the arts, entitled We Moderns, was published in 1918. Today, he is identified as one of the central figures of the modern Scottish literary Renaissance, both for his poetry and for his book Scott and Scotland (1936)
Popular poetry
- We were a tribe, a family, a people.
Wallace and Bruce guard now a painted field,41 lines - Now the ice lays its smooth claws on the sill,
The sun looks from the hill28 lines - 'MY life is done, yet all remains,
The breath has gone, the image not,32 lines - If a good man were ever housed in Hell
By needful error of the qualities,20 lines, 2 comments
