ABSTRACT
Scottish poet, critic, translator, and novelist, Muir (1887–1959) was born and spent his early years in rural communities in the Orkneys. After a period as A.R. Orage’s assistant on the ‘New Age’, he devoted his life to poetry and translation, and to prolific articles which contained, according to T.S. Eliot, ‘the best criticism of our time’. With his accomplished wife, Willa, he translated into English numerous works including those of Kafka and of Hermann Broch. His poems (collected in 1960) grew steadily in maturity, and express a humane vision of life which is underlined by his celebrated autobiography (1954).
