Cunninghame Graham A Centenary Study Macdiarmid, Hugh Scottish Literature

MACDIARMID, Hugh. Cunninghame Graham a Centenary Study. Glasgow: Caledonian Press 1952. With a foreword by R.E. Muirhead. Inscribed by the author to Barbara Niven: To/ Barbara Niven/ with love/ Hugh MacDiarmid/ August 1953.' Fine copy, apart from some offsetting to end papers (See images) in slightly soiled dj, with a 2.5cm tear in top edge and 0.5cm nick in bottom edge of front panel. Note: Barbara Niven and her husband Ernest Brooks were close friends of the MacDiarmids. She was a talented painter producing a particularly fine full-face portrait of MacDiarmid. Niven and Brooks visited MacDiarmid on Whalsay in 1938 and 1939. It was Niven who produced a wickedly funny line drawing caricature, for MacDiarmid's magazine 'The Voice of Scotland', of a statuesque Willa Muir petting a docile little lamb supposed to be her husband Edwin Muir. No doubt an in-joke about how the Grieves viewed the Muirs. Brooks and Niven were lifelong members of the Communist Party and in the Thirties had helped found the Manchester Theatre Union with Joan Littlewood and the folk singer Ewan McColl. From 1950 she worked full time for the Daily Worker and was the papers national organiser and then PPPS of the Morning Stars Fighting Fund, until she died on 8 July 1972.