Selected Essays of Hugh MacDiarmid - Paperback

by Hugh MacDiarmid (Author), Duncan Glen (Editor)

Selected Essays of Hugh MacDiarmid, edited and introduced by Duncan Glen, brings together a wide-ranging selection of prose by the poet otherwise known as Christopher Murray Grieve, a towering figure of twentieth-century Scottish letters. While MacDiarmid is now recognized as one of the century's great poets, his prolific prose--scattered across journals, newspapers, pamphlets, and polemical tracts--remains less accessible. Glen's introduction situates MacDiarmid's output within the contexts of journalism, nationalism, communism, and cultural polemic, emphasizing the urgency with which he wrote rather than stylistic polish. Trained as a reporter before the First World War and active as a journalist for over a decade thereafter, MacDiarmid developed a capacity for producing vivid, quotational, argumentative prose at speed. That facility was turned into a tool for cultural agitation: whether in The Scottish Chapbook, The Northern Review, or The Voice of Scotland, MacDiarmid used his essays to argue for a revival of Scots language, to demand recognition of Scotland's artistic traditions, and to intervene in contemporary political debates from socialism to Douglasite economics.