Edwin Muir Papers

The Edwin Muir Papers (Coll-445) includes manuscripts and other working materials for literary and critical works and important correspondence with leading Scottish writers.

There are manuscripts of seven poems by Muir and of his essay The Estate of Poetry, further working materials for published volumes, and notes for lectures given by Muir as Warden of Newbattle Abbey College.

Correspondence includes letters from Muir to George Mackay Brown and Eric Linklater, and to his wife Willa Muir. There are further important letters from Muir to the mathematician A. C. Aitken, together with other correspondence with writers and academics.

The Papers also include ‘Recollections of Edwin and Willa Muir’ by Morley Jamieson (Gen 2180/4) and a memoir of Muir's time as Warden of Newbattle Abbey College by the College's administrator Margaret McLean (E87.47).

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Edwin Muir in Other EUL Collections

There is much material of Muir interest in other EUL Collections, including creative and critical writings by George Mackay Brown, Norman MacCaig, and Marion Lochhead, letters from Muir to MacCaig, Maurice Lindsay, and Hugh MacDiarmid, and works by Muir in the personal library of Lewis Grassic Gibbon. Muir is also mentioned in correspondence to Helen Cruickshank, Tom Scott, Fred Urquhart, and Hugh MacDiarmid (particularly in relation to the feud with MacDiarmid triggered by Muir's Scott and Scotland).