Edwin Muir's reputation today rests primarily on his poetry and secondarily on his criticism, autobiography, and translations. Between 1927 and 1932, however, he wrote three novels that served his personal purposes by developing his writing ability and by allowing him to confront, understand, and exorcize some inner conflicts that had gnawed at him since his youth. None of these novels received much critical acclaim, and none sold particularly well, but all have qualities that will amply repay the modern reader who seeks them out. They are highly unusual and fundamentally experimental works that communicate some of the intellectual excitement that Muir felt in writing them.

The youngest of six children, Muir was born on Pomona, the largest of the Orkney Islands, on 15 May 1887 to James Muir, a tenant farmer, and Elizabeth Cormack Muir. When Edwin was two the family moved to Wyre, one of the smallest of the islands, on...