James Leslie Mitchell - Lewis Grassic Gibbon

1901 - 1935

Lewis Grassic Gibbon is the celebrated pen-name of James Leslie Mitchell, one of the outstanding figures in Scottish Literature, world famous as the author of the trilogy of novels known as A Scots Quair.

Born at Hillhead of Seggat, Auchterless in Aberdeenshire on 13 February 1901, Leslie Mitchell's background and upbringing were steeped in the traditional crofting life of the north-east of Scotland; as an adult, Mitchell looked back proudly on his peasant roots.  While his early childhood, until the age of seven, was spent at his birthplace,  the following period of nine years when he lived at Bloomfield at Arbuthnott in the Howe o' the Mearns was profoundly influential.

Life in this small rural community shaped Leslie Mitchell's thoughts  and beliefs as he grew from boyhood to early adulthood.  The people and places, sights, smells and sounds from this time, etched on his memory, were to be recreated with vivid imaginative power many years later in the fiction of Lewis Grassic Gibbon.

Mitchell's success as a writer was hard earned.  A brilliant pupil with a flair for writing, he experienced mixed fortunes subsequently in journalism in Aberdeen and Glasgow and in military service in the Middle East and the south of England.  Finally, happily married to Rebecca Middleton, a former neighbour and schoolmate at Arbuthnott, he took the plunge in 1929 to become a professional writer.

Based in the south of England, Leslie Mitchell threw himself into his work with extraordinary zeal, producing seventeen full length books in under seven years of amazing versatility ranging from novels and short story collections to studies of exploration, biography and history - as well as a steady stream of stories, essays and book reviews.

James Leslie Mitchell is acclaimed the world over for stories and novels of great power and originality. Very much a young man in a hurry, Mitchell was forced by social hardship to endure various forms of employment before finally embarking upon a writing career.  Less than six years elapsed before he died of peritonitis, a happy family man cut off in his prime, not yet thirty four years old; yet he left behind a body of work of awesome range and substance which continues to captivate readers throughout the world.

Mitchell produced Scottish fiction which pays full homage to his northeast roots. Sunset Song (1932) rightly wins greatest acclaim as a vibrant tribute to his ain folk, the Scottish peasant crofters among whom he had grown up. Chris Guthrie's story maintains its compelling appeal through the two succeeding novels in the trilogy A Scots Quair, Cloud Howe (1933) and Grey Granite (1934). And the short stories collected in Scottish Scene (1934), the miscellany shared with the poet Hugh MacDiarmid, reach the same heights of craftsmanship, especially 'Clay', 'Smeddum' and 'Greenden'.   His works, memorably adapted for radio, television and stage, have steadily established his reputation as a Scottish writer of truly global significance. Such an awesome publishing list leaves us to ponder sadly what he might have gone on to achieve had he not died, tragically young, on 7 February 1935.