George Mackay Brown

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George Mackay Brown (17 October 1921 - 13 April 1996), was a Scottish poet, author and dramatist, whose work has a distinctly Orcadian character.

Born in Stromness in the Orkney Islands, Mackay Brown is considered one of the great Scottish poets of the 20th century. From his youth, he was affected by tuberculosis. Apart from a spell as a mature student at the University of Edinburgh, and Newbattle Abbey College when Edwin Muir was warden, he spent most of his life in his native islands. From them he gained most of his inspiration, in poems, stories and novels which ranged through time. He drew on the Icelandic Orkneyinga Saga, especially in his novel Magnus.

He was nominated for the Booker Prize in 1994 for his Beside the Ocean of Time. His autobiography, For the Islands I Sing, was published shortly after his death. A biography George Mackay Brown: The Life by Maggie Fergusson was published in 2006.

Composer Peter Maxwell Davies collaborated with Mackay Brown for many of his Orkney-inspired works.

1 Selected Works
2 Discography
3 External links

[edit] Selected Works

[edit] Poetry

The Storm (1954)
Loaves and Fishes (1959)
The Year of the Whale (1965)
A Calendar of Love (1967)
Fishermen with Ploughs (1971)
Poems New and Selected (1971)
Winterfold (1976)
Voyages (1983)
The Wreck of the Archangel (1989)
Brodgar Poems (1992)
Foresterhill (1992)
Following a Lark (1996)
Water (1996)
Travellers (2001)
Collected Poems (2005)

[edit] Short stories

An Orkney Tapestry (1969)
A Time to Keep (1969)
Hawkfall (1974)
The Two Fiddlers (1974)
The Sun's Net (1976)
Andrina and Other Stories (1983)
The Golden Bird: Two Orkney Stories (1987) won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction.
The Masked Fisherman and Other Stories (1989)
Tryst on Egilsay (1989)
Winter Tales (1995)
The Island of the Women and Other Stories (1998)

[edit] Plays

A Spell for Green Corn (1970)
The Sea-King's Daughter (1991)

[edit] Novels

Greenvoe (1972)
Magnus (1973)
Time in a Red Coat (1984)
Vinland (1992)
Beside the Ocean of Time (1994) shortlisted for Booker Prize and judged Scottish Book of the Year by the Saltire Society

[edit] Essays and Autobiography

Letters from Hamnavoe (1975)
Under Brinkie's Brae (1979)
Portrait of Orkney (1981)
Rockpools and Daffodils: An Orcadian Diary, 1979-91 (1992)
For the Islands I Sing: An Autobiography (1997)
Stained Glass Windows (1998)
Northern Lights (1999) (Includes Poetry)

[edit] Children's Stories

Pictures in the Cave (1977)
Six Lives of Fankle the Cat (1980)

[edit] Discography

For the islands I sing a collection of poems and short stories produced in 2006 by Orkney Aye [1] a Young Enterprise Scotland company [2]. It includes previously unpublished recordings of the author reading his own works.