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An Autobiography (Canongate Classics)
  
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An Autobiography (Canongate Classics) (Paperback)

by Edwin Muir (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
RRP: £6.99
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An Autobiography (Canongate Classics) + Edwin Muir Selected Poems + Scottish Journey: A Modern Classic
Price For All Three: £21.67

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Product details

  • Paperback: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd; New Ed edition (23 Jun 2008)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0862414237
  • ISBN-13: 978-0862414238
  • Product Dimensions: 19.3 x 12.7 x 2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 172,059 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories:

    #20 in  Books > Poetry, Drama & Criticism > Drama > Genres > Political
    #56 in  Books > Poetry, Drama & Criticism > History & Criticism > Poetry & Poets > 20th Century
    #68 in  Books > Biography > Novelists, Poets & Playwrights > Playwrights

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Product Description

Product Description

Edwin Muir was born in a small island community at the end of the last century. From his sheltered childhood in rural Orkney to the turmoil of industrial Glasgow at the turn of the century, Muir offers a startling vision of Scotland and the creative process during an era of unprecedented change. Witness to the most traumatic years and events of our modern age, Edwin Muir, in his life as in his art, was haunted by the symbolic "fable" which he longed to find beneath the surface "story" of mere events. From his dream notebooks to his travels in Eastern Europe, Muir paints an unforgettable picture of the slow and sometimes painful growth of a poet's sensibility as he comes to terms with his own nature amidst the terror and confusion of the 20th century. A peronal memoir by George Mackay Brown is also included.

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An Autobiography (Canongate Classics)
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An Autobiography (Canongate Classics) 5.0 out of 5 stars (2)
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Edwin Muir Selected Poems
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Scottish Journey: A Modern Classic 4.0 out of 5 stars (1)
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A noble soul, 21 Jun 2006
Muir was born into a tenant farming family on Orkney that lived a traditional pattern of life, little changed for centuries. It was hard yet happy, touched with paradise. When the family emigrated to Glasgow, the harmony they had tentatively enjoyed was broken on the harsh realities of industrial life; and, the shattering blows of illness and death. Muir evokes his early life and this terrible shift in beautiful, evocative prose, resonant of the great poet that he is, touching both the boundaries of paradise and the portals of hell. He tells of his slow recovery of well-being through writing, through psychoanalysis and, most importantly, through the love of his wife, Willa. He writes of their travels together in post- First World War Europe, of Prague and of Italy; of making do on writing, especially translating, and living cheaply. He tells of coming to poetry late, of the dreams that often inspired it; and, of discovering, one day finding himself reciting the Lord's Prayer, that he must be a Christian, though of an 'eccentric' kind. It is an autobiography of both depth and surface charm - as he weaves what he calls the Fable (the archetypal patterning of his life, of any human life) with the story (the particulars of his own life). Read it and you will be in the company of fine writer, a great poet and a noble soul.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A beautiful memoir, 14 Feb 2009
By Donaldo "Book lover" (Manchester, England) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   
Edwin Muir was one of the great Scottish poets of the C20th, and this is his account of his life, split into two broad periods. The first is from his birth to around the age of 30, accounting for his time growing up in Orkney before moving to industrial Glasgow in his teenage years, before finally leaving for London and then Europe sometime into the 1920's. The second half picks up from around WW2 and into the years afterwards.

They are quite remarkably different accounts, different both in style and focus. The first is more concerned with the sharp contrast between his rural upbringing in the epic landscapes of Orkney and the harsh realities of the unhealthy, impersonal, industrial Glasgow. His account of growing up in Orkney is magical and other-worldly, aided considerably by his poet's economy of prose and eye for telling detail and imagery. When he moves to Glasgow this economy stays with him, though it is less magical and mythical things he sees now (arguably though as we are a post industrialist society, is this world any more alien to us than of the agrarian Orkney he describes?).

It is an intensely personal and introspective memoir, to the point where he lives and works as a clerk in various Glasgow offices during the period of WW1, with barely a mention to it. However, such is the ability of Muir's writing to drag you in his account of how he and his family struggled to survive in Glasgow that you barely notice it. Most of his family died within a few years of moving to Glasgow. He was ill for many years himself, cured only by a slum doctor who spent much time with him. The mental scars he bore after his claustrophobic proximity to this tragedy were considerable and lasted for many years after. It is only years later in London when an analyst starts to work with him as a patient for no fee does he realise how ill he was; at one point he was capable of having waking dreams that he could control.

The second part of the book is in sharp contrast to the first, This concerns the period of WW2 and after when he is working as a writer both in Britain (during the war) and in Europe after. You can tell immediately from his prose that this is a much more wordly man concerned with what is happening around him. Most striking is his account as a visiting teacher with the British Council to Prague after WW2. The initial period of optimism amongst the Czechs is then quickly extinguished by a Communist coup. The new regime rolls out the Orwellian nightmare those of us who read the history of the period have come to accept and expect; how dispiriting to have seen it by yourself without the benefit of hindsight we enjoy.

I'm rarely a reader of biographies but this book has been quite dear to my heart since I finished it. It is a good story told with such beautiful prose that I wish it had been twice as long; it could have been about the life of a binman who never left the town he was born in and Edwin Muir would still make it a wonderful read. I'm going to go away and read the rest of his books now.
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