Lucky Poet: A Self-Study in Literature and Political Ideas, being the Autobiography of Hugh MacDiarmid

MacDiarmid 2000; the Collected Works from Carcanet

by Hugh MacDiarmid

First published in 1943, this book had a minatory 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.

436 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1943

About the author

Christopher Murray Grieve, known by his pen name, Hugh MacDiarmid, was a Scottish poet and cultural activist.

MacDiarmid was instrumental in creating a Scottish version of modernism and was a leading light in the Scottish Renaissance of the 20th century. Unusually for a first generation modernist, he was a communist; unusually for a communist, he was a committed Scottish nationalist. He wrote in English and literary Scots (sometimes referred to as Lallans).

Reviews

[Scott Matthews · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting read - but I wonder if it would have held my attention had it not been that he was from Langholm. I can't remember whether it was his modernism that interested me or if it was my interest in Macdiarmid that got me into modernism.