Alan Bold

Alan Norman Bold (1943–1998) was a Scottish poet, biographer, and journalist. He was born in Edinburgh.

He edited Hugh MacDiarmid's Letters and wrote the influential biography MacDiarmid. Bold had acquainted himself with MacDiarmid in 1963 while still an English Literature student at Edinburgh University. His debut work, Society Inebrious, with a lengthy introduction by MacDiarmid, was published in 1965, during Bold's final university year. This early publication kick-started a prolific poetic career with Bold publishing another three books of verse before the end of the decade, including the ambitious book-length poem The State of the Nation. He also edited The Penguin Book of Socialist Verse (1970) and published a 1973 biography of Robert Burns.

Alan Bold married an art teacher, Alice; they had a daughter, Valentina, who is now head of Scottish Studies at the University of Glasgow at Dumfries. A lifelong heavy drinker who dealt with the boozy life of the poet in such collections as A Pint of Bitter, Bold suffered a heart attack in early 1998 and died in a hospital in Kirkcaldy at the age of 54.

Famous quotes containing the words alan and/or bold:

    Methodological individualism is the doctrine that psychological states are individuated with respect to their causal powers.
    —Jerry Alan Fodor (b. 1935)

    “Dirty fellow!” exclaimed the Captain, seizing both her wrists, “hark you, Mrs. Frog, you’d best hold your tongue; for I must make bold to tell you, if you don’t, that I shall make no ceremony of tripping you out of the window, and there you may lie in the mud till some of your Monseers come to help you out of it.”
    Frances Burney (1752–1840)