Dear Grieve : Letters to Hugh MacDiarmid (C.M. Grieve)

John Manson's collection of letters to the Scottish poet and activist MacDiarmid (1892-1978) - or to Christopher Grieve, or to Hugh, or Chris, or Christie, or Hughie - is a major work and a monumental achievement. It is described in the Introduction by Alan Riach as a "collection so rich in diversity, covering historical epochs, strata of human character, social engagement, political motivation and accomplishment, that it will take some time before its impact and value really sinks in and embeds itself in modern literary and political culture". The Letters are presented by decade, from the 1920s through to the 1970s, and the notes include a biographical list of the 286 correspondents. This is the fruit of a lifetime of dedicated scholarly research and follows John Manson's initial co-editorship with David Craig of the first paperback edition of MacDiarmid's Selected Poems (1970), and his later co-editorship of The Revolutionary Art of the Future: Rediscovered Poems, with Dorian Grieve and Alan Riach (2003). The editor is himself a fine poet and translator.

John Manson is a poet and writer. His work since early retirement has focussed on research on Scottish authors of the 1930s, mainly Hugh MacDiarmid, Lewis Grassic Gibbon and James Barke, as well as on translation of prose and poetry in to English and of poetry in to Scots. Alan Riach is a poet and Professor of Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow