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:
“It wasn’t by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short. The laws of prose writing are as immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“... in writing you cannot possibly be interesting if what you say is not true, if it is what I call “a true lie,” i.e., a truth which gives the wrong impression. For no matter how subtly you lie in writing, people know it and don’t believe you, and the whole secret of being interesting is to be believed.”
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