MacDiarmid, Hugh

Britannica Concise

Print Article :: Email Article :: Cite Article

Hugh MacDiarmid

orig. Christopher Murray Grieve

born Aug. 11, 1892, Langholm, Dumfriesshire, Scot.

died Sept. 9, 1978, Edinburgh

Scottish poet.

In 1922 he founded the monthly Scottish Chapbook, in which he published his lyrics and sparked the Scottish literary renaissance. A radical leftist, he rejected English as a medium and scrutinized modern society in verse written in �synthetic Scots,� an amalgam of various dialects. A noted work is the extended rhapsody A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle (1926). He later returned to standard English in such volumes as A Kist of Whistles (1947) and In Memoriam James Joyce (1955). He is regarded as Scotland's preeminent poet of the early 20th century.

Images and Media:

More on "Hugh MacDiarmid" from the 32 Volume Encyclopædia Britannica:

MacDiarmid, Hugh - preeminent Scottish poet of the first half of the 20th century and leader of the Scottish literary renaissance.

English literature - Pound, Lewis, Lawrence, and Eliot were the principal male figures of Anglo-American Modernism, but important contributions also were made by the Irish poet and playwright William Butler Yeats and the Irish novelist James Joyce. By virtue of nationality, residence, and, in Yeats's case, an unjust reputation as a poet still steeped in Celtic mythology, they had less immediate impact upon the ...

Soutar, William - Scottish poet, second in importance to Hugh MacDiarmid among the writers of the Scottish Renaissance movement.

Gibbon, Lewis Grassic - Scottish novelist whose inventive trilogy published under the collective title A Scots Quair (1946) made him a significant figure in the 20th-century Scottish Renaissance.

Scotland - World War I had a great effect on Scottish society; 74,000 Scots were killed and industry mobilized as never before in a coordinated national effort. Clyde shipbuilding and engineering were crucial, and Clydeside was the key munitions centre in Britain. In retrospect, however, the expansion of heavy industry in the 1920s was in fact an overexpansion. The collapse of the wartime boom in 1920 began ...

To cite this article:

MLA style:
"." Encyclop�dia Britannica. . Britannica Concise Encyclopedia.�� <>.
APA style:
. (). In Encyclop�dia Britannica. Retrieved �, , from Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:

Search for "Hugh MacDiarmid" at Encyclop�dia Britannica Online for all this plus dictionary definitions, magazine articles, and more.

Britannica Concise is a complete, 28,000 article, single-volume encyclopedia from the editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. Visit Encyclopædia Britannica Online to access the complete Encyclopædia Britannica, the Britannica Student Encyclopedia, a world atlas, interactive timelines, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary and Thesaurus, hundreds of magazine titles, daily features and much more.

Nov	JUL	Oct
	12
2006	2007	2008