Writing
Macdonald first appeared in print as a poet in 1782 when he published Velina, a poetical fragment in imitation of Spencer. A couple of years later he published a novel called The Independent, which was 'favourably spoken of by the majority of its readers'. Macdonald also wrote the play, Vimonda, a Tragedy. Alexander Tytler (who met Macdonald several times 'in companies of literary people') recorded that Macdonald married a young girl in Glasgow who had been his maidservant; the congregation did not approve and deserted his meeting-house. Macdonald became disgusted with his profession, resigned from his clerical duties, and moved to Edinburgh. It was in Edinburgh in 1787 that Vimonda was first performed, at the Theatre Royal. Walter Scott, aged sixteen in 1787, would recall seeing Macdonald in James Sibbald’s circulating library (where Scott was also to spot Robert Burns). In Edinburgh he became a friend John Brown, the painter.
Read more about this topic: Andrew Macdonald (poet)
Famous quotes containing the word writing:
“Success and failure on the public level never mattered much to me, in fact I feel more at home with the latter, having breathed deep of its vivifying air all my writing life up to the last couple of years.”
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)
“A song is no song unless the circumstance is free and fine. If a singer sing from a sense of duty or from seeing no way to escape, I had rather have none. Those only can sleep who do not care to sleep; and those only write or speak best who do not too much respect the writing or the speaking.”
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“The big toad sits in my writing room
preventing me from writing. I am a flower
who dries out under her hot breath.”
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