Maurice Lindsay Papers

The Maurice Lindsay Papers (Coll-56) include working materials for publications and broadcasts, and correspondence with other important Scottish writers.

There are working papers for six monographs by Lindsay: Clyde Waters, By Yon Bonnie Banks, The Discovery of Scotland, The Eye Is Delighted, Portrait of Glasgow, and Robin Philipson. Other manuscript materials include individual poems, short stories, novels (unpublished), radio plays, and Lindsay’s libretto for Thea Musgrave’s opera The Abbot of Drimock. There are also scripts of radio and television broadcasts, along with articles and reviews for literary journals.

Lindsay’s influential editorial work is also reflected in his correspondence, which includes letters from many of the most important Scottish writers of the 20th century, including George Mackay Brown, Neil M. Gunn, Norman MacCaig, Hugh MacDiarmid, Sorley Maclean, Edwin Morgan, Edwin Muir, Iain Crichton Smith, and Sydney Goodsir Smith. Many are accompanied by submitted manuscripts including significant work by Hugh MacDiarmid and Sydney Goodsir Smith.

There are also letters from major British and world figures, such as Kingsley Amis, T. S. Eliot, Ian Fleming, E. M. Forster, Siegfried Sassoon, George Bernard Shaw, and Stephen Spender.

Maurice Lindsay's role as editor and broadcaster placed him at the centre of Scottish cultural life for over sixty years. His papers are thus an invaluable resource not only for those researching Lindsay's own work but also for scholars interested in all aspects of Scotland's literary, artistic, and musical renaissance in the 20th century.

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Lindsay in Other EUL Collections

There is further material of Lindsay interest in other EUL collections of Scottish literary manuscripts, including letters from Lindsay to Helen Cruickshank, Hamish Henderson, Hugh MacDiarmid, Fred Urquhart, and to the editors of Scottish International Review. The Papers of Norman MacCaig include manuscript reviews of works written or edited by Lindsay.