Andrew McNeillie (born 12 August 1946) is a British poet and literary editor.

Early life and education

He was born in Old Colwyn,

North Wales North Wales ( cy, Gogledd Cymru) is a region of Wales, encompassing its northernmost areas. It borders Mid Wales to the south, England to the east, and the Irish Sea to the north and west. The area is highly mountainous and rural, with Snowdonia N ...

. He was educated in a local primary school, Colwyn Bay Grammar School, and

Ysgol John Bright Ysgol John Bright is a secondary school on Maesdu Road, Llandudno in Conwy County Borough, Wales. It was founded with money and support from the social reformer John Bright, whose son died in Llandudno in 1864. Until 1969 the school was a select ...

. He read English at Magdalen College, Oxford as a mature student from 1971 to 1973. He is the son of John McNeillie, also known as "Ian Niall".

Career

His collection of poems ''Nevermore'' (2000), in the Oxford Poets series from Carcanet Press, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. His prose memoir ''An Aran Keening'' tells of his stay on Inis Mór, just short of a year through 1968 and 1969. It was published in 2001 by

The Lilliput Press The Lilliput Press is an Irish publishing house. It was founded in 1984 by Antony Farrell, in County Westmeath "Noble above nobility" , image_map = Island of Ireland location map Westmeath.svg , subdivision_type = Country ...

, Dublin, and in 2002 in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

by the

University of Wisconsin Press The University of Wisconsin Press (sometimes abbreviated as UW Press) is a non-profit university press publishing peer-reviewed books and journals. It publishes work by scholars from the global academic community; works of fiction, memoir and p ...

. Adam Nicolson, choosing his book of the year for 2002, in ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was f ...

'' wrote: ‘I enjoyed nothing more this year than ''An Aran Keening'', Andrew McNeillie’s soft, sharp, funny and often heart-wrenchingly nostalgic account of the 11 months he spent on Inishmore, the biggest of the Aran Islands, in the late 1960s.’ Tim Robinson in ''

The Irish Times ''The Irish Times'' is an Irish daily broadsheet newspaper and online digital publication. It launched on 29 March 1859. The editor is Ruadhán Mac Cormaic. It is published every day except Sundays. ''The Irish Times'' is considered a newspaper ...

'' wrote: ‘…McNeillie’s prose can be as pristine and effervescent as the sea’s edge on a summer beach….Aran is once again a larger place than it was.’ In 2000 McNeillie founded the

Clutag Press The Clutag Press was established in 2000 as a venture by Andrew McNeillie to issue Clutag Poetry Leaflets, by established and emerging poets. In 2004, it received backing from The Christopher Tower Fund (in association with Christ Church, Oxfo ...

, in Thame, Oxfordshire. It has issued limited edition works by

Seamus Heaney Seamus Justin Heaney (; 13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013) was an Irish poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Tom Paulin Thomas Neilson Paulin (born 25 January 1949 in Leeds, England) is a Northern Irish poet and critic of film, music and literature. He lives in England, where he was the G. M. Young Lecturer in English Literature at Hertford College, Oxford. Earl ...

, and

Geoffrey Hill Sir Geoffrey William Hill, FRSL (18 June 1932 – 30 June 2016) was an English poet, professor emeritus of English literature and religion, and former co-director of the Editorial Institute, at Boston University. Hill has been considered to be ...

among others. Its literary archive is now collected exclusively by the Bodleian Library,

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to th ...

. Between 1986 and 1994, McNeillie was the editor of the first four volumes of ''The Essays of

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Woolf was born i ...

'', published as the

critical edition Textual criticism is a branch of textual scholarship, philology, and of literary criticism that is concerned with the identification of textual variants, or different versions, of either manuscripts or of printed books. Such texts may range in da ...

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 n ...

(the sixth and final volume being issued in 2011). He was the Literature Editor of

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 ...

between 2004 and 2009.

Bibliography

Poetry

*''Nevermore'' ( Carcanet Press, 2000) *''Now, Then'' ( Carcanet Press, 2002) *''Arkwork with Artwork'' (

, 2006) *''Slower'' ( Carcanet Press, 2006)

Prose memoir

*''An Aran Keening'' (Lilliput Press, 2001)

Biography

*'' Ian Niall: Part of his Life'' (

, 2007)

Editor

*''The Essays of Virginia Woolf'', Vols 1–4 (Hogarth Press, 1986–1994) * ''Archipelago'' (

, 2007–present)