Edwin Muir is best known as a poet and essayist. He identified himself variously as Orcadian, Scot and European. He was a part of the Scottish Literary Renaissance of the 1920s, actively praising the early Scots poems of Hugh MacDiarmid and contributing to journals such as
The Scottish Chapbookand
The Scottish Nation. He was also deeply influenced by the broader European literary scene, and his poetic career began in earnest while he was living in Germany. Along with his wife, Willa, he produced the first translations of Kafka’s
The Castle,
The Trialand
America, and of Broch’s
The Sleepwalkers; he and Willa were instrumental in introducing these works to the English-speaking intellectual community. He was praised by T. S. Eliot, and began his career as a critic writing for A. R.…
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Citation: Matthews, Kirsten. "Edwin Muir". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 12 May 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3243, accessed 21 November 2024.]