Willa Muir

WM , a twentieth-century Scotswoman, wrote in fiction and non-fiction about gender inequality, patriarchy, and the repressiveness of Calvinism, but never defined herself as a feminist. She was alert to the devaluing of women's work, although she played whole-heartedly the role of supportive wife to her better-known husband, the poet and critic Edwin Muir . She published two novels, a story, and several substantial essays on the condition of women and on Scottish culture. Along with her husband she translated over forty volumes, mostly German fiction. She did some of these collaborative translations on her own, though library catalogues tend to assign responsibility differently from the way she does. Undoubtedly her own are those published under the pseudonym Agnes Neill Scott. After her husband's death in 1959, she edited a volume of his poetry and wrote an autobiography celebrating their forty-year marriage. She left unpublished work including two more novels.