Edwin Muir

Edwin Muir 1887-1959, British author, b. Orkney Islands, Scotland. He moved with his family to Glasgow in 1901, where he remained for 18 years. In 1919 he went to London and joined the staff on the New Age. During the early 1920s he traveled on the Continent, supporting himself chiefly with contributions to the Freeman. At the age of 35 he turned to writing poetry, producing such collections as Chorus of the Newly Dead (1926) and The Labyrinth (1949). However, it was not until his Collected Poems appeared in 1952 that Muir achieved recognition. A visionary poet, he sought in his personal, often dreamlike verse to understand the meaning of the spiritual universe. Muir is also well known as a literary critic. Included among his critical writings are The Structure of the Novel (1928), The Present Age, from 1914 (1939), and Essays on Literature and Society (1949). His other works include translations of Kafka; three novels, The Marionette (1927), The Three Brothers (1931), and Poor Tom (1932); and an excellent autobiography, The Story and the Fable (1940), which later appeared in an enlarged edition, An Autobiography (1954).

Bibliography: See his letters, ed. by P. H. Butter (1974); studies by G. Marshall (1987) and J. Aitchison (1988).

Muir, Edwin (1887–1959), poet, born in Orkney. He turned to socialism (through the writings of Blatchford) and to the works of Nietzsche. He became assistant to Orage, and contributed to New Age. Muir married Willa Anderson (1890–1970) in 1919 and in 1921 they went to Prague and remained in Europe for four years, a period that later produced their collaborative translations from the German (notably of Kafka, 1930–49). More importantly, it freed Muir's imagination as a poet. First Poems (1925) was followed by several other collections, including Chorus of the Newly Dead (1926), The Labyrinth (1949), and Collected Poems 1921–1951 (1952). Muir's poetry is traditional in form, and much of his imagery is rooted in the landscapes of his childhood. A sense of subdued menace lies beneath many of his quiet and orderly poems, which sometimes (as in his well known piece ‘The Horses’) achieve the Apocalyptic. Muir also published three novels, a number of critical works, and a highly evocative autobiography published in 1940 as The Story and the Fable and revised as An Autobiography in 1954.