Neil M. Gunn |
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Neil Miller Gunn was born in Dunbeath, Caithness, on 8 November 1891, the son of a fisherman. At the age of 12 he went to live with his married sister at St John's Town of Dalry, Kirkcudbrightshire, where he was privately educated. In 1907 he passed the Civil Service examination and after brief periods in London and Edinburgh was appointed customs and excise officer in Inverness (December 1911), with responsibility for distilleries. During the First World War, while stationed at Kinlochleven, he began to write. Among his friends was fellow customs officer and writer Maurice Walsh. Gunn married Jessie Dallas Frew in 1921, and they lived in Wigan (England) for a year, then at Lybster in Caithness and at Inverness, where Gunn became customs officer at the Glen Mhor distillery in 1924.
Gunn had contributed stories poems to "The Apple Tree" (a London literary magazine), Chambers Journal, the Cornhill Magazine, and to the Northern Review, edited by his frined Hugh MacDiarmid. Gunn was to become an important figure in MacDiarmid's "Scottish Renaissance". He published his first novel, "Grey Coast", in 1926, but his first success was with "Morning Tide" (1930). He wrote (less successfully) for the theatre, and became friendly with O. H. Mavor ("James Bridie") and John Macintyre ("John Brandane"). Gunn left Customs and Excise to become a full-time writer in 1937, the year which saw the publication of "Highland River", his most famous novel. He moved to Brae near Dingwall and lived there until 1949. This was his most productive period, with 11 novels in as many years. His later years were spent at Kincraig, Kerrow in Glen Cannich, and Dalcraig on the Black Isle near Inverness. He had been heavily involved in the Scottish National Party since before the war, and he also became increasingly interested in Zen Buddhism, which he discussed in his autobiography "The Atom of Delight". His later novels frequently draw on popular genre forms, such as detective fiction in "Bloodhunt". He wrote a number of radio and television documentary scripts and wrote for several British and American magazines. He died on 15 January 1973 after a short illness. AC Grey Coast (1926); Hidden Doors (1929); Poaching at Grianan (1929-30); Morning Tide (1930); The Lost Glen (1932); Sun Circle (1933); Butcher's Broom (1934); Whisky and Scotland (1935); Highland River (1937); Off in a Boat (1938); Wild Geese Overhead (1939); Second Sight (1940); The Silver Darlings (1941); Storm and Precipice (1942); Young Art and Old Hector (1942); The Serpent (1942); The Green Isle of the Great Deep (1944); The Key of the Chest (1945); The Drinking Well (1946); The Shadow (1948); The Silver Bough (1948); Highland Pack (1949); The Lost Chart (1949); The White Hour (1950); The Well at the World's End (1951); Bloodhunt (1952); The Other Landscape (1954); The Atom of Delight (1956). Selected Letters (ed. J. B. Pick, Edinburgh, 1987).
A Neil Gunn page can be found at http://www.pmpc.napier.ac.uk/nmg/nmg.html
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