Scottish Renaissance
Encyclopedia
The Scottish Renaissance was a mainly literary movement of the early to mid 20th century that can be seen as the Scottish
version of modernism
. It is sometimes referred to as the Scottish literary renaissance, although its influence went beyond literature into music, visual arts, and politics (among other fields). The writers and artists of the Scottish Renaissance displayed a profound interest in both modern philosophy and technology, as well as incorporating folk influences, and a strong concern for the fate of Scotland's declining languages
.
It has been seen as a parallel to other movements elsewhere, including the Irish Literary Revival
, the Harlem Renaissance
(in America
), the Bengal Renaissance
(in Kolkata
, India
) and the Jindyworobak Movement
(in Australia
), which emphasised indigenous folk traditions.
The term "Scottish Renaissance" is most frequently said to have been coined by the French
Languedoc
poet and scholar Denis Saurat
in his article "Le Groupe de la Renaissance Écossaise", which was published in the Revue Anglo-Américaine in April 1924. The term had appeared much earlier, however, in the work of the polymath
ic Patrick Geddes
and in a 1922 book review by Christopher Murray Grieve
("Hugh MacDiarmid") for the Scottish Chapbook that predicted a "Scottish Renascence as swift and irresistible as was the Belgian Revival between 1880 and 1910."
These earlier references make clear the connections between the Scottish Renaissance and the Celtic Twilight
and Celtic Revival
movements of the late 19th century, which helped reawaken a spirit of cultural nationalism
among Scots of the modernist generations. Where these earlier movements had been steeped in a sentimental and nostalgic Celticism
, however, the modernist-influenced Renaissance would seek a rebirth of Scottish national culture that would both look back to the medieval "makar
" poets William Dunbar
and Robert Henrysoun
as well as look towards such contemporary influences as T. S. Eliot
, Ezra Pound
, and D. H. Lawrence
.
The turn of the 20th century saw the first stirrings of a new era in Scottish arts and letters. As writers such as George Douglas Brown
railed against the "Kailyard school
" that had come to dominate Scottish letters, producing satiric, realist accounts of Scottish rural life in novels like The House with the Green Shutters
(1901), Scots language poets such as Violet Jacob
and Marion Angus undertook a quiet revival of regionally inflected poetry in the Lowland vernacular. The aforementioned Patrick Geddes would continue his foundational work in town and regional planning, developing the triad "Place - Work - Folk" as a matrix for new thinking about the relationships between people and their local environments. In the realm of visual arts, John Duncan
would refine his Celtic myth inspired Symbolist painting to include an increasing emphasis on collage
and the flatness of the image, while his younger colleague John Duncan Fergusson
would explore the Impressionist and Fauvist techniques that would lead eventually to the founding of the Scottish Colourists
group. In the early 1910s, the young Stanley Cursiter
would begin a series of paintings that reflected the contemporary continental movements of Futurism
and Vorticism
. In architecture and the decorative arts, the towering figures of Charles Rennie Mackintosh
and the Glasgow Four would give Scotland its very own "school" of modern design and help create the "Glasgow style
". Scotland in the early 20th century was experiencing an efflorescence of creative activity, but there was not yet a sense of a particular shared movement or an overt national inflection to all of this artistic effort.
It was not until the literary efforts of Hugh MacDiarmid
that the Scottish Renaissance can properly be said to have begun. Starting in 1920, C. M. Grieve (having not yet adopted his nom de plume of Hugh MacDiarmid) began publishing a series of three short anthologies entitled Northern Numbers: Being Representative Selections from Certain Living Scottish Poets (including works by John Buchan, Violet Jacob
, Neil Munro
, and Grieve himself). These anthologies, which appeared one each year from 1920–22, along with his founding and editing of the Scottish Chapbook review (in the annus mirabilis
of Modernism
, 1922), established Grieve/MacDiarmid as the father and central figure of the burgeoning Scottish Renaissance movement that he had prophesied.
By about 1925, MacDiarmid had largely abandoned his English language
poetry and began to write in a kind of "synthetic Scots" known as Lallans
, that was a hybrid of regional Scots
dialect
s and lexicographical
artifacts exhumed from Jamieson's Dictionary of the Scottish Language, often grafted onto a Standard English
grammatical structure.
This had an electrifying effect on the literary
landscape of the time. Other poets, among them Sydney Goodsir Smith
and William Soutar
, soon followed in MacDiarmid's footsteps and also wrote in Lallans. Although sometimes accused of neglecting the Gaelic side of Scotland's linguistic identity, actually the writers of Scots language poetry inspired poets in the Scottish Gaelic language too, and its more positive effects on that literature are still being felt.
MacDiarmid's influence, however, went much further than this. By networking and bringing writers together he managed to create the sense of a literary movement in Scotland of writers with shared aims. Neil M. Gunn
, Lewis Grassic Gibbon
, Edwin Muir
(an Orcadian man of letters not drawn into Lallans writing), Sorley MacLean
(Somhairle MacGill-Eain) and many others felt the benefit of his influence, and are also generally referred to as being part of the Renaissance.
, and also the visual arts, for example Pittendreigh MacGillivray
and Wendy Wood
.
Although many of the participants were to live until the 1970s and later, the truly revolutionary aspect of the Scottish Renaissance can be said to have been over by the 1960s, when it became eclipsed by various other movements, often international in nature.
The most famous clash was at the 1962 Edinburgh Writers Festival, where Hugh MacDiarmid
denounced Alexander Trocchi
, a younger Scottish writer, as "cosmopolitan scum", and Trocchi himself claimed "sodomy" as a basis for his writing. This is often seen as a clash of the generations, although it is rarely reported that the two writers corresponded with each other later, and became friends. Both were controversialists of sorts.
The Scottish Renaissance also had a profound effect on the Scottish independence movement, and the roots of the Scottish National Party
may be said to be firmly in it. Arguably, Scottish devolution came about partly because of it, though it was actually delivered by the UK Labour Party which itself has strong Scottish influence dating back to its own founding.
Note: These figures were not all contemporaries of the first generation of Scottish Renaissance writers and artists who emerged in the 1920s and 1930s. However, most did become involved with the movement in some form through interactions with figures such as Gunn or MacDiarmid, even if at a slightly later date.
People generally considered to be post-renaissance but strongly affected by it:
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
version of modernism
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
. It is sometimes referred to as the Scottish literary renaissance, although its influence went beyond literature into music, visual arts, and politics (among other fields). The writers and artists of the Scottish Renaissance displayed a profound interest in both modern philosophy and technology, as well as incorporating folk influences, and a strong concern for the fate of Scotland's declining languages
Endangered language
An endangered language is a language that is at risk of falling out of use. If it loses all its native speakers, it becomes a dead language. If eventually no one speaks the language at all it becomes an "extinct language"....
.
It has been seen as a parallel to other movements elsewhere, including the Irish Literary Revival
Irish Literary Revival
The Irish Literary Revival was a flowering of Irish literary talent in the late 19th and early 20th century.-Forerunners:...
, the Harlem Renaissance
Harlem Renaissance
The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned the 1920s and 1930s. At the time, it was known as the "New Negro Movement", named after the 1925 anthology by Alain Locke...
(in America
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
), the Bengal Renaissance
Bengal Renaissance
The Bengal Renaissance refers to a social reform movement during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the region of Bengal in Undivided India during the period of British rule...
(in Kolkata
Kolkata
Kolkata , formerly known as Calcutta, is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal. Located on the east bank of the Hooghly River, it was the commercial capital of East India...
, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
) and the Jindyworobak Movement
Jindyworobak Movement
The Jindyworobak Movement was a nationalistic Australian literary movement whose white members sought to promote indigenous Australian ideas and customs, particularly in poetry. They were active from the 1930s to around the 1950s...
(in Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
), which emphasised indigenous folk traditions.
Beginnings
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
Languedoc
Languedoc
Languedoc is a former province of France, now continued in the modern-day régions of Languedoc-Roussillon and Midi-Pyrénées in the south of France, and whose capital city was Toulouse, now in Midi-Pyrénées. It had an area of approximately 42,700 km² .-Geographical Extent:The traditional...
poet and scholar Denis Saurat
Denis Saurat
Denis Saurat was an Anglo-French scholar, writer, and broadcaster on a wide range of topics, including explaining French society and culture to the English and what he called "philosophical poetry." He was born in Toulouse and died in Nice, France, but his most active years were spent in London,...
in his article "Le Groupe de la Renaissance Écossaise", which was published in the Revue Anglo-Américaine in April 1924. The term had appeared much earlier, however, in the work of the polymath
Polymath
A polymath is a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas. In less formal terms, a polymath may simply be someone who is very knowledgeable...
ic Patrick Geddes
Patrick Geddes
Sir Patrick Geddes was a Scottish biologist, sociologist, philanthropist and pioneering town planner. He is known for his innovative thinking in the fields of urban planning and education....
and in a 1922 book review by Christopher Murray Grieve
Hugh MacDiarmid
Hugh MacDiarmid is the pen name of Christopher Murray Grieve , a significant Scottish poet of the 20th century. He was instrumental in creating a Scottish version of modernism and was a leading light in the Scottish Renaissance of the 20th century...
("Hugh MacDiarmid") for the Scottish Chapbook that predicted a "Scottish Renascence as swift and irresistible as was the Belgian Revival between 1880 and 1910."
These earlier references make clear the connections between the Scottish Renaissance and the Celtic Twilight
Irish Literary Revival
The Irish Literary Revival was a flowering of Irish literary talent in the late 19th and early 20th century.-Forerunners:...
and Celtic Revival
Celtic Revival
Celtic Revival covers a variety of movements and trends, mostly in the 19th and 20th centuries, which drew on the traditions of Celtic literature and Celtic art, or in fact more often what art historians call Insular art...
movements of the late 19th century, which helped reawaken a spirit of cultural nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
among Scots of the modernist generations. Where these earlier movements had been steeped in a sentimental and nostalgic Celticism
Celticism
Celticism may refer to:*a word or linguistic property adapted from a Celtic language **List of English words of Celtic origin**List of English words of Scottish Gaelic origin**Irish words used in the English language...
, however, the modernist-influenced Renaissance would seek a rebirth of Scottish national culture that would both look back to the medieval "makar
Makar
A makar is a term from Scottish literature for a poet or bard, often thought of as royal court poet, although the term can be more generally applied. The word functions in a manner similar to the Greek term which means both maker and poet...
" poets William Dunbar
William Dunbar
William Dunbar was a Scottish poet. He was probably a native of East Lothian, as assumed from a satirical reference in the Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie , where, too, it is hinted that he was a member of the noble house of Dunbar....
and Robert Henrysoun
Robert Henryson
Robert Henryson was a poet who flourished in Scotland in the period c. 1460–1500. Counted among the Scots makars, he lived in the royal burgh of Dunfermline and is a distinctive voice in the Northern Renaissance at a time when the culture was on a cusp between medieval and renaissance sensibilities...
as well as look towards such contemporary influences as T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
, Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
, and D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
.
The turn of the 20th century saw the first stirrings of a new era in Scottish arts and letters. As writers such as George Douglas Brown
George Douglas Brown
George Douglas Brown was a Scottish novelist, best known for his highly influential realist novel The House with the Green Shutters , which was published the year before his death at the age of 33.-Life and work:...
railed against the "Kailyard school
Kailyard school
The Kailyard school of Scottish fiction was developed about the 1890s as a reaction against what was seen as increasingly coarse writing representing Scottish life complete with all its blemishes. It has been considered as being an overly sentimental representation of rural life, cleansed of real...
" that had come to dominate Scottish letters, producing satiric, realist accounts of Scottish rural life in novels like The House with the Green Shutters
The House with the Green Shutters
The House with the Green Shutters is a novel by the Scottish writer George Douglas Brown, first published in 1901 by John MacQueen. Set in mid-19th century Ayrshire, in the fictitious town of Barbie which is based on his native Ochiltree, it consciously violates the conventions of the sentimental...
(1901), Scots language poets such as Violet Jacob
Violet Jacob
Violet Jacob was a Scottish writer, now known especially for her historical novel Flemington and her poetry....
and Marion Angus undertook a quiet revival of regionally inflected poetry in the Lowland vernacular. The aforementioned Patrick Geddes would continue his foundational work in town and regional planning, developing the triad "Place - Work - Folk" as a matrix for new thinking about the relationships between people and their local environments. In the realm of visual arts, John Duncan
John Duncan (painter)
John Duncan was born in Dundee, Scotland in 1866. His father was a cattleman, but John was disinterest in the family business over an interest in visual art. By the age of 11 he was a student at the Dundee School of Art, then based at the High School of Dundee....
would refine his Celtic myth inspired Symbolist painting to include an increasing emphasis on collage
Collage
A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....
and the flatness of the image, while his younger colleague John Duncan Fergusson
John Duncan Fergusson
John Duncan Fergusson was a Scottish artist, regarded as one of the major artists of the Scottish Colourists school of painting.- Early life :...
would explore the Impressionist and Fauvist techniques that would lead eventually to the founding of the Scottish Colourists
Scottish Colourists
The Scottish Colourists were a group of painters from Scotland whose work was not very highly regarded when it was first exhibited in the 1920s and 1930s, but which in the late 20th Century came to have a formative influence on contemporary Scottish art....
group. In the early 1910s, the young Stanley Cursiter
Stanley Cursiter
Stanley Cursiter, CBE was a Scottish artist who played an important role in introducing Post-Impressionism and Futurism to Scotland.- Biography :...
would begin a series of paintings that reflected the contemporary continental movements of Futurism
Futurism (art)
Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It emphasized and glorified themes associated with contemporary concepts of the future, including speed, technology, youth and violence, and objects such as the car, the airplane and the industrial city...
and Vorticism
Vorticism
Vorticism, an offshoot of Cubism, was a short-lived modernist movement in British art and poetry of the early 20th century. It was based in London but international in make-up and ambition.-Origins:...
. In architecture and the decorative arts, the towering figures of Charles Rennie Mackintosh
Charles Rennie Mackintosh
Charles Rennie Mackintosh was a Scottish architect, designer, watercolourist and artist. He was a designer in the Arts and Crafts movement and also the main representative of Art Nouveau in the United Kingdom. He had a considerable influence on European design...
and the Glasgow Four would give Scotland its very own "school" of modern design and help create the "Glasgow style
Glasgow School
The Glasgow School was a circle of influential modern artists and designers who began to coalesce in Glasgow, Scotland in the 1870s, and flourished from the 1890s to sometime around 1910. Representative groups were: The Four , the Glasgow Girls and the Glasgow Boys...
". Scotland in the early 20th century was experiencing an efflorescence of creative activity, but there was not yet a sense of a particular shared movement or an overt national inflection to all of this artistic effort.
It was not until the literary efforts of Hugh MacDiarmid
Hugh MacDiarmid
Hugh MacDiarmid is the pen name of Christopher Murray Grieve , a significant Scottish poet of the 20th century. He was instrumental in creating a Scottish version of modernism and was a leading light in the Scottish Renaissance of the 20th century...
that the Scottish Renaissance can properly be said to have begun. Starting in 1920, C. M. Grieve (having not yet adopted his nom de plume of Hugh MacDiarmid) began publishing a series of three short anthologies entitled Northern Numbers: Being Representative Selections from Certain Living Scottish Poets (including works by John Buchan, Violet Jacob
Violet Jacob
Violet Jacob was a Scottish writer, now known especially for her historical novel Flemington and her poetry....
, Neil Munro
Neil Munro (Hugh Foulis)
Neil Munro was a Scottish journalist, newspaper editor, author and literary critic. He was born in Inveraray and worked as a journalist on various newspapers....
, and Grieve himself). These anthologies, which appeared one each year from 1920–22, along with his founding and editing of the Scottish Chapbook review (in the annus mirabilis
Annus mirabilis
Annus mirabilis is a Latin phrase meaning "wonderful year" or "year of wonders" . It was used originally to refer to the year 1666, but is today also used to refer to different years with events of major importance...
of Modernism
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
, 1922), established Grieve/MacDiarmid as the father and central figure of the burgeoning Scottish Renaissance movement that he had prophesied.
By about 1925, MacDiarmid had largely abandoned his English language
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
poetry and began to write in a kind of "synthetic Scots" known as Lallans
Lallans
Lallans , a variant of the Modern Scots word lawlands meaning the lowlands of Scotland, was also traditionally used to refer to the Scots language as a whole...
, that was a hybrid of regional Scots
Scots language
Scots is the Germanic language variety spoken in Lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster . It is sometimes called Lowland Scots to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic, the Celtic language variety spoken in most of the western Highlands and in the Hebrides.Since there are no universally accepted...
dialect
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
s and lexicographical
Lexicography
Lexicography is divided into two related disciplines:*Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries....
artifacts exhumed from Jamieson's Dictionary of the Scottish Language, often grafted onto a Standard English
Standard English
Standard English refers to whatever form of the English language is accepted as a national norm in an Anglophone country...
grammatical structure.
This had an electrifying effect on the literary
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
landscape of the time. Other poets, among them Sydney Goodsir Smith
Sydney Goodsir Smith
Sydney Goodsir Smith was a Scottish poet, artist, dramatist and novelist. He wrote poetry in literary Scots often referred to as Lallans, and was a major figure of the Scottish Renaissance....
and William Soutar
William Soutar
William Soutar was a Scottish poet, born 1898. He served in the navy in World War I, and afterwards studied at the University of Edinburgh, where he encountered the work of Hugh MacDiarmid. This led to a radical alteration in his work, and he became a leading poet of the Scottish Literary...
, soon followed in MacDiarmid's footsteps and also wrote in Lallans. Although sometimes accused of neglecting the Gaelic side of Scotland's linguistic identity, actually the writers of Scots language poetry inspired poets in the Scottish Gaelic language too, and its more positive effects on that literature are still being felt.
MacDiarmid's influence, however, went much further than this. By networking and bringing writers together he managed to create the sense of a literary movement in Scotland of writers with shared aims. Neil M. Gunn
Neil M. Gunn
Neil Miller Gunn was a prolific novelist, critic, and dramatist who emerged as one of the leading lights of the Scottish Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s...
, Lewis Grassic Gibbon
Lewis Grassic Gibbon
Lewis Grassic Gibbon was the pseudonym of James Leslie Mitchell , a Scottish writer.-Biography:...
, Edwin Muir
Edwin Muir
Edwin Muir was an Orcadian poet, novelist and translator born on a farm in Deerness on the Orkney Islands. He was remembered for his deeply felt and vivid poetry in plain language with few stylistic preoccupations....
(an Orcadian man of letters not drawn into Lallans writing), Sorley MacLean
Sorley MacLean
Sorley MacLean was one of the most significant Scottish poets of the 20th century.-Early life:He was born at Osgaig on the island of Raasay on 26 October 1911, where Scottish Gaelic was the first language. He attended the University of Edinburgh and was an avid shinty player playing for the...
(Somhairle MacGill-Eain) and many others felt the benefit of his influence, and are also generally referred to as being part of the Renaissance.
Non-literary arts
Although often considered in a literary light, the Scottish Renaissance influenced other branches of the arts. Particular examples can be found in music, with a composer such as Francis George ScottFrancis George Scott
Francis George Scott was a Scottish composer.Born in Hawick, Roxburghshire, he was the son of a supplier of mill-engineering parts. Educated at Hawick, and at the universities of Edinburgh and Durham, he studied composition under Jean Roger-Ducasse...
, and also the visual arts, for example Pittendreigh MacGillivray
James Pittendreigh MacGillivray
Dr. James Pittendrigh MacGillivray was a prominent Scottish sculptor. He was born in Inverurie, Aberdeenshire, the son of a sculptor, and studied under William Brodie and John Mossman...
and Wendy Wood
Wendy Wood
Wendy Wood was a well-known campaigner for Scottish independence and founder of the Scottish Patriots...
.
Decline and influence
The most famous clash was at the 1962 Edinburgh Writers Festival, where Hugh MacDiarmid
Hugh MacDiarmid
Hugh MacDiarmid is the pen name of Christopher Murray Grieve , a significant Scottish poet of the 20th century. He was instrumental in creating a Scottish version of modernism and was a leading light in the Scottish Renaissance of the 20th century...
denounced Alexander Trocchi
Alexander Trocchi
Alexander Whitelaw Robertson Trocchi was a Scottish novelist.-Early career:Trocchi was born in Glasgow to a Scottish mother and Italian father. After working as a seaman on the Murmansk convoys, he attended University of Glasgow. On graduation he obtained a traveling grant that enabled him to...
, a younger Scottish writer, as "cosmopolitan scum", and Trocchi himself claimed "sodomy" as a basis for his writing. This is often seen as a clash of the generations, although it is rarely reported that the two writers corresponded with each other later, and became friends. Both were controversialists of sorts.
The Scottish Renaissance also had a profound effect on the Scottish independence movement, and the roots of the Scottish National Party
Scottish National Party
The Scottish National Party is a social-democratic political party in Scotland which campaigns for Scottish independence from the United Kingdom....
may be said to be firmly in it. Arguably, Scottish devolution came about partly because of it, though it was actually delivered by the UK Labour Party which itself has strong Scottish influence dating back to its own founding.
Scottish Renaissance Figures
Other people connected with the Scottish renaissance, not mentioned previously, are listed below.Note: These figures were not all contemporaries of the first generation of Scottish Renaissance writers and artists who emerged in the 1920s and 1930s. However, most did become involved with the movement in some form through interactions with figures such as Gunn or MacDiarmid, even if at a slightly later date.
- George Blake (novelist)
- Alan BoldAlan BoldAlan Norman Bold was a Scottish poet, biographer and journalist.He edited Hugh MacDiarmid's Letters and wrote the influential biography MacDiarmid. Bold had acquainted himself with MacDiarmid in 1963 while still an English Literature student at Edinburgh University. His debut work, Society...
(MacDiarmid's biographer and critic) - James BridieJames BridieJames Bridie was the pseudonym of a Scottish playwright, screenwriter and surgeon whose real name was Osborne Henry Mavor....
(playwright) - Catherine CarswellCatherine CarswellCatherine Roxburgh Carswell was a Scottish author, biographer and journalist, now known as one of the few women who took part in the Scottish Renaissance...
(novelist, biographer of Robert Burns and D.H. Lawrence) - A.J. Cronin (doctor, novelist)
- Helen CruickshankHelen CruickshankHelen Burness Cruickshank was a minor Scottish poet and suffragette, better known for being a focal point of the Scottish Renaissance. At her home in Corstorphine, various Scottish writers of note would meet....
(poet, who provided a focal point for the social scene) - Robert GariochRobert GariochRobert Garioch Sutherland, , was a Scottish poet and translator. His poetry was written almost exclusively in the Scots language, he was a key member in the literary revival of the language in the mid-20th century...
(poet) - George Campbell HayGeorge Campbell HayGeorge Campbell Hay was a Scottish poet and translator, who wrote in Scottish Gaelic, Lowland Scots and English. He used the patronymic Deòrsa Mac Iain Dheòrsa. He also wrote poetry in French, Italian and Norwegian, and translated poetry from many languages into Gaelic.-Life:He was born in...
[Deòrsa Mac Iain Deòrsa] (poet, translator) - John MacDougall HayJohn MacDougall HayJohn MacDougall Hay was a Scottish novelist, best known for his work Gillespie.He was the father of George Campbell Hay, the Scottish Gaelic poet....
(novelist, journalist, father of George Campbell Hay) - Jessie KessonJessie KessonJessie Kesson , born as Jessie Grant McDonald, was a Scottish novelist, playwright and radio producer.-Life:...
(novelist, playwright) - Archie Lamont (poet, nationalist pamphleteer)
- William Lamb (artist) (sculptor)
- Maurice LindsayMaurice LindsayMaurice Lindsay CBE was a Scottish broadcaster, writer and poet. He was born in Glasgow.After serving in World War II he became a radio broadcaster, also editing the 1946 anthology Modern Scottish Poetry, and writing music criticism. He later was Programme Controller at Border Television.His...
(poet, critic) - Eric LinklaterEric LinklaterEric Robert Russell Linklater was a British writer, known for more than 20 novels, as well as short stories, travel writing and autobiography, and military history.-Life:...
(novelist and politician) - Norman MacCaigNorman MacCaigNorman MacCaig was a Scottish poet. His poetry, in modern English, is known for its humour, simplicity of language and great popularity.-Life:...
(poet) - William McCanceWilliam McCanceWilliam McCance was a Scottish artist and second Controller of the Gregynog Press, Wales.Born in 1894 at Cambuslang, Scotland, William McCance was the seventh of eight children...
(painter) - Fionn MacCollaFionn MacCollaFionn MacColla born Thomas Douglas MacDonald on 4 March 1906, was a Scottish novelist closely connected to the Scottish Renaissance. Although he wrote in English, he was very interested in Scottish Gaelic language and culture and campaigned for it to return to, what he perceived to be, its...
[Thomas "Tom" Douglas MacDonald] (novelist, historian) - Compton MacKenzieCompton MackenzieSir Compton Mackenzie, OBE was a writer and a Scottish nationalist.-Background:Compton Mackenzie was born in West Hartlepool, England, into a theatrical family of Mackenzies, but many of whose members used Compton as their stage surname, starting with his grandfather Henry Compton, a well-known...
(novelist, journalist) - Robert McLellanRobert McLellanRobert McLellan OBE was a Scottish dramatist and poet, mainly writing in the Scots language.-Early life and education:McLellan was born in 1907 at Linmill, a fruit farm in Kirkfieldbank in the Clyde valley, the home of his maternal grandparents. He was educated at Bearsden Academy in Glasgow...
(Scots language dramatist) - F. Marian McNeillF. Marian McNeillF. Marian McNeill was born in 1885 at Holm in Orkney where her father was the minister of the Free Presbyterian Kirk. She was a Scottish folklorist, best known for writing The Silver Bough , a four-volume set of Scottish folklore, considered essential by many in the field.She is also known as the...
(folklorist) - Naomi MitchisonNaomi MitchisonNaomi May Margaret Mitchison, CBE was a Scottish novelist and poet. She was appointed CBE in 1981; she was also entitled to call herself Lady Mitchison, CBE since 5 October 1964 .- Childhood and family background :Naomi Margaret Haldane was...
(novelist, memoirist, activist) - Edwin Morgan (poet, not to be confused with Edwin MuirEdwin MuirEdwin Muir was an Orcadian poet, novelist and translator born on a farm in Deerness on the Orkney Islands. He was remembered for his deeply felt and vivid poetry in plain language with few stylistic preoccupations....
) - Willa Muir (novelist, translator)
- Nan ShepherdNan ShepherdNan Shepherd was a Scottish novelist and poet.-Life:She attended Aberdeen High School for Girls and graduated from the University of Aberdeen in 1915, subsequently lecturing for the Aberdeen College of Education.After she retired in 1956 she edited the Aberdeen University review...
(novelist, poet) - Tom ScottTom Scott (poet)Tom Scott was a Scottish poet, editor, and prose writer. His writing is closely tied to the New Apocalypse, the New Romantics, and the Scottish Renaissance.- Bibliography :...
(poet, translator, critic) - Derick ThomsonDerick ThomsonProfessor Derick S. Thomson MA, BA, Dlitt, FRSE, FBA , known as Ruaraidh MacThòmais in his native Scottish Gaelic, is a Scottish poet, publisher, lexicographer, academic and writer. He is originally from Lewis, but has spent much of his life in Glasgow, where he was Professor of Celtic at the...
[Ruaraidh MacThòmais] (poet) - Douglas YoungDouglas Young (classicist)Professor Douglas Young ; June 5, 1913 – October 23, 1973) was a Scottish poet, scholar, and translator. He was the leader of the Scottish National Party from 1942 to 1945.Young was born in Tayport, Fife...
(poet, translator, essayist)
People generally considered to be post-renaissance but strongly affected by it:
- William Neill (poet)
- James Robertson (novelist and poet)
- Iain Crichton SmithIain Crichton SmithIain Crichton Smith was a Scottish man of letters, writing in both English and Scottish Gaelic, and a prolific author in both languages...
[Iain Mac a'Ghobhainn] (poet, novelist)