Grey Granite
Contents ( 16)
to Hugh MacDiarmid
Contents
Map of The Land of a Scots Quair
Cautionary Note
Introduction
Note on the Text
I Epidote
II Sphene
III Apatite
IV Zircon
Grey Granite: Curtain Raiser
Notes
Glossary
Map of The Land of a Scota Quair
Cautionary Note
The ‘Duncairn’ of this novel was originally ‘Dundon’. Unfortunately, several English journals in pre-publication notices of the book described my imaginary city as Dundee, two Scottish sheets identified it with Aberdeen, and at least one American newspaper went considerably astray and stated that it was Edinburgh—faintly disguised.
Instead, it is merely the city which the inhabitants of the Mearns (not foreseeing my requirements in completing my trilogy) have hitherto failed to build.
L. G. G.
Introduction
When Grey Granite was published at the end of 1934 it was advertised as the last volume of a trilogy. Yet many who had missed the first two novels were swept off their feet when they read it. This seems to have been the experience of Tom Wintringham, the influential editor of Left Review, who termed it ‘the best novel written this side the Channel since Hardy stopped writing’.1 And it was certainly that of the Sheffield Daily Telegraph reviewer, who was glad he had not come across the earlier volumes because, after the overpowering experience of Grey Granite, the ‘pleasure of their first perusal’ was still to come (31 January 1935). Page Cooper of Doubleday (Gibbon’s American publisher), who did of course know the other books, could not keep it out of her mind and found it ‘a bigger, more disturbing, and beautiful book than Cloud Howe. One hesitates to label anything with the word genius, but there isn’t any other for the quality of his mind.’2 Of those who went in for comparisons, the New York Times reviewer was almost as enthusiastic, calling it ‘Gibbon’s most swiftly moving book and most adventurous in ideas’ (3 February 1935). More significantly, perhaps, Gibbon’s greatest Scottish contemporaries, Hugh MacDiarmid and Edwin Muir, both liked it: MacDiarmid enthusiastically, Muir less so (though he preferred it to its predecessors).3