11 Facts About Willa Muir

Willa Muir, known as Agnes Neill Scott, was a Scottish novelist, essayist and translator.

Willa Muir was the major part of a translation partnership with her husband, Edwin Muir.

Willa Muir was born Wilhelmina Johnston Anderson in 1890 in Montrose, where she spent her childhood.

Willa Muir's parents were originally from Unst in the Shetland Islands, and the Shetland dialect of the Scots language was spoken at home.

Willa Muir was one of the first Scottish women to attend university, and she studied classics at the University of St Andrews, graduating in 1910 with a first class degree.

In 1919 she married the poet Edwin Muir and gave up her job in London as assistant principal of Gipsy Hill teacher training college.

Willa Muir was the more able linguist and she was the major contributor.

Willa Muir recorded in her journal that her husband "only helped".

Willa Muir's book Women: An Inquiry is a book-length feminist essay.

Willa Muir's 1936 book Mrs Grundy in Scotland is an investigation of the anxieties and pressure to conform to respectability norms in Scottish life.

Willa Muir's husband died in 1959 and she wrote a memoir Belonging about their life together.