MacDIARMID, Hugh. A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle.

From the library of MacDiarmid's rival

MacDIARMID, Hugh. A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood & Sons Ltd. 1926.

8vo. Original blue cloth, spine lettered in gilt, upper board lettered and tooled in gilt and with fillets in blind; pp. viii, 108; minor bruising to head and foot of spine; light foxing to text, with slight discoloration to final paste-down; a very good copy; bookplate of Charles Murray to front pastedown (see below).

First edition, first impression from the library of Scots Poet and MacDiarmid’s rival Charles Murray.

This epic, A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle is an important work in Scottish literature. Written in Scots, MacDiarmid incorporates elements of traditional Scottish poetry forms such as the ballad and the folk song, and incorporates great swings from lyricism to comedy to diatribe as the poet contemplates the state of the nation.

Provenance: From the library of fellow Scottish poet Charles Murray (1864–1941), with his bookplate showing a Great Highland bagpiper. Murray also wrote in vernacular Scots, using the Doric dialect of north-eastern Scotland, but MacDiarmid derided him for being parochial and sentimental in contrast to his own Modernist approach. He considered the language of the Doric dialect to be insufficient for “significant intellection”.

SKU: 2120015