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Charles Murray

1864 - 1941

Charles Murray © Elphinstone Institute, University of Aberdeen
POEMS BIBLIOGRAPHY CRITICISM

Charles Murray was a skilled and popular poet who wrote in the pure Scots of his native Aberdeenshire, despite spending his working lifetime as a civil engineer and senior civil servant in South Africa. He served in the 2nd Boer War, and as Director-of-Works in the South African Defence Force in the First World War. He returned to Scotland upon retirement in 1924. Three volumes of poetry were published between 1900 and 1920 (Hamewith remaining in print since), and his poems on the war, written with a clear eye and without sentimentality, give a picture of the effects of the conflict upon ordinary country people.

See link below for the Elphinstone Institute’s biographical website for Charles Murray.

Read the poems

  • When Will the War Be By?
  • A Sough o’ War
  • The Whistle
  • Gin I Was God
  • Heraclitus
  • Hamewith

Selected Bibliography

Hamewith (1900, and London: Constable, 1909) 
A Sough o' War (London: Constable, 1917) 
In the Country Places (London: Constable, 1920)
The Last Poems (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press for the Charles Murray Memorial Fund, 1969)
Hamewith: the complete poems of Charles Murray (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press for the Charles Murray Memorial Fund, 1976)
Hamewith: Charles Murray: collected poems (Oxford: Alden Press for the Charles Murray Memorial Fund, 2008)

 

Selected Biography & Criticism

Critical introductions by Nan Shepherd in Hamewith: the complete poems of Charles Murray (1976) and by Colin Milton in Hamewith: Charles Murray: collected poems (2008).  

Alex R. Scott, Ours the Harvest: a life of Charles Murray (Aberdeen: Charles Murray Memorial Fund, 2003) 

From the Library Catalogue

Publications about Charles Murray
Publications by Charles Murray

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