Correspondence with Scottish poet, editor, critic and historian, Maurice Lindsay. This largely relates to the preparation and publication of three anthologies of Scottish Poetry which Lindsay was involved in editing for Carcanet Press. These are as follows: Scottish poetry 8, ed. Maurice Lindsay, Alexander Scott and Roderick Watson (Carcanet, sponsored by the Scottish Arts Council, 1975), the eighth in a series of annual anthologies of Scottish verse which was taken over by Carcanet in 1975 (see /1-5, /7-11, /21, /25, /27-28, /30-32 and /35 ); Scottish poetry 9, ed. Lindsay, Scott and Watson (Carcanet, sponsored by the Scottish Arts Council, 1976), the final anthology in the series (/17-19, /30-31, /33-34, /36-41 and /45-47); and Modern Scottish poetry: an anthology of the Scottish renaissance 1925-1975, ed. Lindsay (Carcanet, 1976), an updated and revised version of Lindsay's earlier Scottish Renaissance anthologies published by Faber and Faber and Robert Hale (/3-6, /10-16, /19-27, /30-31, /34, /36-44 and /48-9 ). The correspondence relates to such issues as: Carcanet's takeover of the yearly anthologies; funding for their publication; format; copyright permissions; selection of poets and poems; Lindsay's introduction to Modern Scottish poetry; royalty payments to the poets represented; and Schmidt's thoughts on the contents of the yearly anthologies, which he suggests contain little of real merit (/38). The file includes photocopies of letters to Lindsay from Hugh MacDiarmid (/15) and Sorley MacLean (/27). Also included are letters from Trevor Royle of the Scottish Arts Council (/29 and /32) and S.M. Simpson of the National Library of Scotland (/44).
Other topics include: Edwin Morgan's receipt of a Book Award from the Scottish Arts Council in 1975, for his book, Essays (Carcanet, 1974) (/29); the poetry of [C.H.] Sisson (/37); and a disagreement between Lindsay and the Scottish Arts Council over their bias against subsidising books published by English publishers (/39-41).
Dated at: Glasgow.
Holograph and typescript.