SOURCE: "Autobiographical Themes in the Novels of Edwin Muir," in Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature, Vol. 6, No. 2, Summer, 1965, pp. 228-42.

In the following essay, Mellown traces Muir's artistic development through an examination of his use of autobiographical material in The Marionette, The Brothers, and Poor Tom.

During his lifetime Edwin Muir was probably best known as a professional journalist who specialized in reviewing novels and in translating, with his wife, various German books.¹ To a more select audience he was a valued poet, novelist, and literary critic, and to Scottish readers he was a sometimes tart commentator on the contemporary political scene. Indeed there were few literary forms which Muir did not use with skill, and while today his poetry is receiving ever more favorable attention, any estimate of his literary achievement must be based on the sum of his diverse accomplishments, for they all reflect, to a...