Marion Angus

Marion Emily Angus (1865–1946) was a Scottish poet who wrote in the Scots vernacular or Braid Scots, defined variously as a dialect of English or a language closely related to it. Her prose writings were mainly in standard English. She is seen as a forerunner of a Scottish renaissance in inter-war poetry, as her verse marked a departure from the Lallans tradition of Robert Burns in a direction similar to that of Hugh MacDiarmid, Violet Jacob and others.

Born on 27 March 1865 in Sunderland, England, Marion Angus was the third of the six children of Mary Jessie, née Watson, and Henry Angus (1833–1902), a Presbyterian minister from North-East Scotland. Her grandfather on her mother's side was William Watson, sheriff-substitute of Aberdeen from 1829 to 1866, who in 1841 founded there the first industrial school for street children. Her father graduated from Marischal College in the same city and was ordained in Sunderland in 1859. He became minister of Erskine United Free Church, Arbroath, in 1876, and retired from the ministry in 1900. The family left Sunderland for Arbroath in February 1876, when Marion was almost eleven. She was educated at Arbroath High School, but did not carry on to a higher education as her brothers did. However, she may have been to France, as she spoke the language fluently and made several references to France in her prose writings. She also visited Switzerland and left an account of it.

Marion wrote fictionalized diaries anonymously for a newspaper, the Arbroath Guide. Entitled The Diary of Arthur Ogilvie (1897–8) and Christabel's Diary (1899), they were also published in book form, but no copies of the former have survived. These have been taken to shed indirect light on Angus's life in early adulthood, which included abundant family and church work, and exercise in the form of walking and cycling.

After her father's death in 1902, Marion and her sister Emily ran a private school at their mother's house in Cults, outside Aberdeen, but this was given up after the outbreak of the First World War, during which she worked in an army canteen. She and her sister returned to Aberdeen in 1921. However, Emily became mentally ill in April 1930 and was admitted to the Glasgow Royal Asylum, Gartnavel. Marion moved to various places around Glasgow to be near the institution where her sister was. She continued to publish poetry and gave occasional lectures, but her finances deteriorated and she became subject to depression. Fellow Scots poet Nan Shepherd became a close friend in this period.

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