The life and work of Willa Muir, 1890-1955
Abstract
The thesis reconstructs the first sixty-five years of the life of Willa Muir, and
provides a preliminary critical analysis of her pre-1955 works.
Wilhelmina Anderson was born in 1890 in Montrose where she spent the first,
formative seventeen years of her life before proceeding to St Andrews
University in 1907. Her university years produced academic and social
success, but also the pain of a disintegrating romantic relationship and the
horror of her brother's nervous breakdown. She spent the later war years in
London studying child psychology at Bedford College, and living in the city's
East End at Mansfield House University Settlement. She met Edwin Muir in
September 1918 and married him in June 1919 - a development which cost her
the vice-principal's post at Gypsy Hill Training College. They spent their first
difficult married years in London where Willa pursued subsistence
employment and struggled to contain the fears which plagued Edwin: but
they were overwhelmed by London life and escaped into Europe for three
years. This adventure included a period in Prague and one during which
Willa taught at A.S. Neill's school near Dresden. They returned to three
frustrating years in Willa's mother's Montrose house (where Willa wrote
Women: An Inquiry) and a damp Buckinghamshire cottage from which they
escaped to the cheaper, warmer climes of southern France. Five years in
Crowborough then ensued; Willa produced a son, an outpouring of
translations and a novel called Imagined Corners. The three years which they
then spent in Hampstead were amongst the happiest in Willa's life. She
produced her second novel, Mrs Ritchie, but also experienced her sons road
accident. This event drove them to seek a less populous location and they
moved to St Andrews. This was a nightmarish period in which they suffered
social ostracism, illness and the effects of the Second World War. Willa wrote
Mrs Grundy in Scotland. Edwin then began an eight year association with
the British Council which started with war work in Edinburgh and then took
them back to Prague. This was an initially happy experience which was
soured by internal machinations at the Council and the horror of the 1948
Communist putsch. They were physically and emotionally injured by this
experience but were healed by a second British Council posting to Rome. The
final chapter describes their residency at Newbattle Abbey College in
Scotland - where Edwin was appointed to the post of warden - and explores
Willa's crisis of confidence during this period. The thesis ends at the point of
the Muir's 1955 departure for Harvard University. It is a natural hiatus in
Willa's personal history and marks the beginning of a comparatively fallow
period in her creative life.
Type
Thesis, PhD Doctor of Philosophy
Rights
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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
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