Hugh MacDiarmid Collection (Writer, Poet and Political Activist) b.1892 – 1978

Reference Code: GB0605 DC007

Title: Hugh MacDiarmid Collection

Covering Date(s):

Extent: 1.5 metres

Level of Description: Fonds

Language of Material: English and (Auld) Scots

Name of Creator(s): Mr. Charles H. Smith, OBE, FICE, a retired civil engineer of Fairmilehead, Edinburgh

Administrative/Biographical History: Born 11th August 1892.

The pseudonym of Christopher Murray Grieve,

MacDiarmid was born and educated in Langholm. He trained as a teacher but became a journalist in 1912, the profession to which he returned in 1920 after service in World War 1. His first book, Annals of the Five Senses, was published under his own name in 1923 by which time he had begun to write poems in Scots and thereafter published them as Hugh MacDiarmid.

A Communist and founder member of the Scottish National Party in 1928, he was a central figure of the 20th Century Scottish Literary Renaissance. Controversial throughout his life, MacDiarmid was expelled from both the Communist and Scottish National Parties in the 1930s.

From 1933 to 1942 he lived with his second wife, Valda Trevlyn, in exile on Whalsay in the Shetland Islands. In 1950 he received a Civil List pension and in 1951 settled at Brownsbank, near Biggar.

Often regarded as his masterpiece, A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle was published in 1926.

MacDiarmid developed Scots as a literary language, drawing from dictionaries of Scots and its dialects and from contemporary speech. By the 1930s, too, he was experimenting with “synthetic English,” created from esoteric vocabularies and scientific terminology. He also translated from the Gaelic and from modern European poetry and edited various literary magazines and anthologies.

His prose autobiography, Lucky Poet, was published in 1943 and reissued in 1972. His Complete Poems 1920-76 were published after his death ( 9th September) in 1978.

In 1980 the then Paisley College Library received a gift of books from Mr. Charles H. Smith, OBE, FICE, a retired civil engineer of Fairmilehead, Edinburgh. In their later years Mr. Smith had become a close friend of the poet Hugh MacDiarmid (Christopher Grieve) and of MacDiarmid’s wife Valda. Much of the donated material comprised works by and about MacDiarmid, and all signed by the poet or his wife. The collection contains various associated items, including press cuttings; photographs; correspondence; personalised Christmas cards; pamphlets; exhibition materials; biographies; listings of the works of Hugh MacDiarmid; self-portrait by Hugh; books by and about Hugh; catalogue of Hugh’s manuscripts from the National Library of Scotland; political speech by Hugh; poetry reviews by and about Hugh; Literary magazines; works by Valda Grieve.

System of Arrangement: The arrangement of this material reflects the original order in which it was received.

Conditions governing access: Open

Copyright/Conditions governing reproduction: Applications for permission to quote should be sent to the Special Collections Librarian. Reproduction is subject to the usual conditions: educational use and condition of documents.

Physical characteristics and technical requirements: None which reflect the use of this material.

Finding aids: a catalogue of this collection is available in hard copy.