Manuscripts of Works by Norman MacCaig

This page lists highlights of Edinburgh University Library's collection of literary manuscripts by Norman MacCaig.

For a fuller listing, see Related Links at the foot of the page.

Poetry

MSS 3198-3199 contain chronologically arranged manuscript or typescript versions of over 1,000 poems written between 1947 and 1992. Each poem is dated in MacCaig's own hand, often with details of place of publication. The individual poems are listed in a supplement to Handlist H69 which may be consulted in EUL's Centre for Research Collections.

In addition, the collection contains working materials for the following collections of MacCaig's verse:

Collections

Translations

MacCaig was unusual among 20th-century Scottish writers in working almost exclusively in one form. EUL does however hold manuscripts for two plays translated by MacCaig: The Threepenny Opera from the German of Bertolt Brecht (MS 3204/1/1) and The Doors of the Night from the Gaelic of Hector MacIver (MS 3204/1/2-3)

Works Edited by MacCaig

Edinburgh holds working materials for Poetry in Scotland (Gen 767/28/1), an anthology of Scottish verse prepared by MacCaig for Poetry Review (ca. 1965). It includes authors' MSS and TSS by: George Mackay Brown, Tom Buchan, Stewart Conn, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Robert Garioch, Maurice Lindsay, Hugh MacDiarmid, Edwin Morgan, Tom Scott, Iain Crichton Smith, Sydney Goodsir Smith, and W. Price Turner.

Critical Materials

Overview

MSS 3202-3203 contain diverse critical materials, mostly unpublished, bearing witness to MacCaig's activity as broadcaster, reviewer, and public speaker, and showing his artistic and critical awareness of major currents in world poetry.

MS 3202 contains notes on many British, Irish, American, and European authors, largely compiled for lectures, talks, or broadcasts. MS 3203 contains drafts and scripts for radio broadcasts from the 1950s onwards and manuscripts of published book reviews. For material relating to Scottish authors, see:

Other Authors Discussed

Other British and Irish authors discussed by MacCaig include: W. H. Auden (MS 3202/7/1), T. S. Eliot (MS 3202/7/3), Robert Graves (MS 3202/9/5), Seamus Heaney (MS 3203/4/27), Ted Hughes (MS 3202/7/2), Philip Larkin (MS 3203/3/2), Kathleen Raine (MS 3203/4/14), Dylan Thomas (MS 3202/6/2), R. S. Thomas (MS 3202/9/4), and W. B. Yeats (MS 3202/14/2).

American writers include: E. E. Cummings (MS 3202/10/2), Robert Frost (MS 3202/8/2), Robert Lowell (MS 3202/8/3), Marianne Moore (MS 3202/10/1), Charles Olson (MS 3202/9/1), Sylvia Plath (MS 3202/6/1), Ezra Pound (MS 3202/14/4), Wallace Stevens (MS 3202/8/1), and William Carlos Williams (MS 3202/6/3). European writers include: Miroslav Holub (MS 3203/3/3), Boris Pasternak (MS 3202/9/3), Andrei Voznesensky (MS 3203/3/1), and Yevgeny Yevtushenko (MS 3202/9/2).

Further Details

The above are highlights of Edinburgh University Library's extensive collection of MacCaig manuscripts. For a fuller listing, see the Archives and Manuscripts Catalogue and, for post-1987 accessions only, Handlist H69. For earlier accessions, consult the manual Index to Manuscripts held in the Centre for Research Collections, Edinburgh University Library.