Willa Muir aka Agnes Neill Scott born Willa Anderson (13 March 189022 May 1970) was a Scottish novelist, essayist and translator.Beth Dickson, '' British women writers : a critical reference guide'' edited by

Janet Todd Janet Margaret Todd OBE (born 10 September 1942) is a British academic and author. She was educated at Cambridge University and the University of Florida, where she undertook a doctorate on the poet John Clare. Much of her work concerns Mary ...

. New York : Continuum, 1989. ; (p. 487-9). She was the major part of a translation partnership with her husband,

Edwin Muir Edwin Muir CBE (15 May 1887 – 3 January 1959) was a Scottish poet, novelist and translator. Born on a farm in Deerness, a parish of Orkney, Scotland, he is remembered for his deeply felt and vivid poetry written in plain language and wit ...

. She and her husband translated the works of many notable German-speaking authors including

Franz Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It ...

. They were given an award in 1958 in their joint names; however, Willa recorded in her journal that her husband "only helped".

Life

Willa Muir was born Wilhelmina Johnston Anderson in 1890 in Montrose, where she spent her childhood. Her parents were originally from

Unst Unst (; sco, Unst; nrn, Ønst) is one of the North Isles of the Shetland Islands, Scotland. It is the northernmost of the inhabited British Isles and is the third-largest island in Shetland after Mainland and Yell. It has an area of . Unst ...

in the

Shetland Islands Shetland, also called the Shetland Islands and formerly Zetland, is a subarctic archipelago in Scotland lying between Orkney, the Faroe Islands and Norway. It is the northernmost region of the United Kingdom. The islands lie about to the no ...

, and the Shetland dialect of the

Scots language Scots ( endonym: ''Scots''; gd, Albais, ) is an Anglic language variety in the West Germanic language family, spoken in Scotland and parts of Ulster in the north of Ireland (where the local dialect is known as Ulster Scots). Most commonly ...

was spoken at home. She was one of the first Scottish women to attend university, and she studied classics at the

University of St Andrews (Aien aristeuein) , motto_lang = grc , mottoeng = Ever to ExcelorEver to be the Best , established = , type = Public research university Ancient university , endowment ...

, graduating in 1910 with a first class degree. In 1919 she married the poet

and gave up her job in London as assistant principal of Gipsy Hill teacher training college. In the 1920s the couple lived in continental Europe for two periods, living in Montrose at other times. During their first period, she supported them by teaching at the Internationalschule in

Hellerau Hellerau is a northern quarter ''(Stadtteil)'' in the city of Dresden, Germany, slightly south of Dresden Airport. It was the first garden city in Germany. The northern section of Hellerau absorbed the village of Klotzsche, where some 18th cent ...

, which was run by her friend

A. S. Neill Alexander Sutherland Neill (17 October 1883 – 23 September 1973) was a Scottish educator and author known for his school, Summerhill, and its philosophy of freedom from adult coercion and community self-governance. Raised in Scotland, Neill ...

. Willa and her husband worked together on many translations, most notable the major works of

. They had translated ''The Castle'' within six years of Kafka's death. In her memoir of Edwin Muir, ''Belonging'', Willa describes the method of translation that she and her husband adopted in their Kafka translations: Willa was the more able linguist and she was the major contributor. She recorded in her journal that her husband "only helped". Between 1924 and the start of the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

her (their) translation financed their life together. In addition she also translated on her own account under the name of ''Agnes Neill Scott''. The couple spent considerable time touring in Europe and she expressed some regret that she had lost a home. A satirical portrait of Willa and Edwin appears in Wyndham Lewis's The Apes of God (1930). When Willa and her husband met Lewis in the mid-1920s, she recorded her sense that he was "one of those Englishmen who do not have the habit of talking to women." Her book ''Women: An Inquiry'' is a book-length

feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...

essay. Her 1936 book ''Mrs Grundy in Scotland'' is an investigation of the anxieties and pressure to conform to respectability norms in Scottish life. In 1944 she was painted by

Nigel McIsaac Nigel ( ) is an English masculine given name. The English ''Nigel'' is commonly found in records dating from the Middle Ages; however, it was not used much before being revived by 19th-century antiquarians. For instance, Walter Scott published ...

, and the painting is in the

Scottish National Portrait Gallery The Scottish National Portrait Gallery is an art museum on Queen Street, Edinburgh. The gallery holds the national collections of portraits, all of which are of, but not necessarily by, Scots. It also holds the Scottish National Photography Co ...

. In 1958, Willa and Edwin Muir were granted the first Johann-Heinrich-Voss Translation Award. Her husband died in 1959 and she wrote a memoir ''Belonging'' (1968) about their life together. She died at

Dunoon Dunoon (; gd, Dùn Omhain) is the main town on the Cowal peninsula in the south of Argyll and Bute, Scotland. It is located on the western shore of the upper Firth of Clyde, to the south of the Holy Loch and to the north of Innellan. As well ...

in 1970.

Works

Novels

*''Imagined Corners'' (1931) *''Mrs Ritchie'' (1933)

Translations as Agnes Neill Scott

*''Boyhood and Youth'' by Hans Carossa (1931) *''A Roumanian Diary'' by Hans Carossa (1929) *''Doctor Gion, etc.'' by Hans Carossa (1933) *''Life Begins'' by Christa Winsloe (1935) * ''The Child Manuela'' by Christa Winsloe (1934)

Translations by Willa and Edwin Muir

*''Power'' by

Lion Feuchtwanger Lion Feuchtwanger (; 7 July 1884 – 21 December 1958) was a German Jewish novelist and playwright. A prominent figure in the literary world of Weimar Germany, he influenced contemporaries including playwright Bertolt Brecht. Feuchtwanger's Ju ...

, New York, Viking Press, 1926. *''The Ugly Duchess: A Historical Romance'' by

, London, Martin Secker, 1927. *''Two Anglo-Saxon Plays: The Oil Islands and Warren Hastings'', by

, London, Martin Secker, 1929. *''Success: A Novel'' by

, New York, Viking Press, 1930. *''The Castle'' by

, London, Martin Secker, 1930. *''The Sleepwalkers: A Trilogy'' by

Hermann Broch Hermann Broch (; 1 November 1886 – 30 May 1951) was an Austrian writer, best known for two major works of modernist fiction: '' The Sleepwalkers'' (''Die Schlafwandler,'' 1930–32) and ''The Death of Virgil'' (''Der Tod des Vergil,'' 1945). ...

, Boston, MA, Little, Brown & Company, 1932. *''Josephus'' by

, New York, Viking Press, 1932. *''Salvation'' by

Sholem Asch Sholem Asch ( yi, שלום אַש, pl, Szalom Asz; 1 November 1880 – 10 July 1957), also written Shalom Ash, was a Polish-Jewish novelist, dramatist, and essayist in the Yiddish language who settled in the United States. Life and work Asch ...

, New York, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1934. *''The Hill of Lies'' by

Heinrich Mann Luiz Heinrich Mann (; 27 March 1871 – 11 March 1950), best known as simply Heinrich Mann, was a German author known for his Social criticism, socio-political novels. From 1930 until 1933, he was president of the fine poetry division of the ...

, London, Jarrolds, 1934. *''Mottke, the Thief'' by

, New York, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1935. *''The Unknown Quantity'' by

, New York, Viking Press, 1935. *''The Jew of Rome: A Historical Romance'' by

, London, Hutchinson, 1935. *''The Loom of Justice'' by

Ernst Lothar Ernst Lothar (; 25 October 1890 – 30 October 1974) was a Moravian-Austrian writer, theatre director/manager and producer. He was born Ernst Lothar Müller, and as Müller is a very common German surname, he dropped it. His brother, Hans M ...

, New York, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1935. *''Night over the East'' by

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn Erik Maria Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (; 31 July 1909 – 26 May 1999) was an Austrian political scientist and philosopher. He opposed the ideas of the French Revolution as well as those of communism and Nazism. Describing himself as a "conserv ...

, London, Sheed & Ward, 1936. *''Amerika'' by

, New York, Doubleday/New Directions, 1946 *''The Trial'' by

, London, Martin Secker, 1937, reissued New York, The Modern Library, 1957. *''Metamorphosis and Other Stories'' by

, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1961.

Other

*''Women: An Inquiry'' (

Hogarth Press The Hogarth Press is a book publishing imprint of Penguin Random House that was founded as an independent company in 1917 by British authors Leonard Woolf and Virginia Woolf. It was named after their house in Richmond (then in Surrey and now ...

, 1925) *''Mrs Grundy in Scotland'' ("The Voice of Scotland" series, Routledge, 1936) *''Women in Scotland'' (

Left Review ''Left Review'' was a journal set up by the British section of the Comintern-sponsored International Union of Revolutionary Writers (previously known as the International Bureau for Revolutionary Literature; also known as the Writers' Internationa ...

, 1936) *''Living with Ballads'' (

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

, 1965) *''Belonging: a memoir'' (1968) *"Elizabeth" and "A Portrait of Emily Stobo", Chapman 71 (1992–93) *"Clock-a-doodle-do", M. Burgess ed., ''The Other Voice'', (1987) *"Mrs Muttoe and the Top Storey", Aileen Christianson, ''Moving in Circles: Willa Muir's Writings'', Edinburgh, Word Power Books, 2007.