Introduction

Abstract An introductory outline of the place of the Muirs as leading figures in the twentieth-century Scottish literary renaissance, and their contribution to and engagement with European letters. An account of the family backgrounds of Edwin and Willa Muir before they met. Willa Anderson, daughter of a draper in Montrose, is a brilliant Classics graduate at St Andrews. Edwin’s family move from rural Orkney to industrial Glasgow and within two years his father, two brothers, and his mother have died. Unfit for military service, with no formal education, young Edwin has to educate himself and make a living in the city as a clerk on his own.