| Administrative History | James Leslie Mitchell ('Lewis Grassic Gibbon') was born in Auchterless, Aberdeenshire in 1901, the son of a tenant farmer. He later moved with his farming family to a croft in Arbuthnott in the Mearns, a setting which would influence his most famous novel, 'Sunset Song' (1932). Mitchell had a chequered school career at Stonehaven and left at 16 to embark on journalism with 'The Aberdeen Journal' and then 'The Scottish Farmer.' His radicalism was evident early on in his role in the council of the Aberdeen Soviet, and a brief period of journalism in Glasgow further increased his Marxist convictions. In 1919 he enlisted in the Royal Army Service Corps and was posted to the Middle East, an experience which became integral to much of his early fiction and non-fiction. He later became a clerk with the Royal Air Force, travelling extensively in the East. After his marriage in 1925 to Rebecca ('Ray') Middleton, a schoolfriend from Arbuthnott, he settled in Welwyn Garden City in Hertfordshire and had his first book published, 'Hanno: or the Future of Exploration' (1928). By 1929 he had committed himself to being a full-time writer, and over the next seven years he would be extremely prolific. Initially he wrote as J. Leslie Mitchell but increasingly he also used the pseuodnym Lewis Grassic Gibbon, from his mother's maiden name (Lilias Grassic Gibbon). Gibbon's seminal achievement is his 'Scots Quair' trilogy ('Sunset Song'; 1932 'Cloude Howe', 1933; 'Grey Granite', 1934). He died in February 1935 and is buried at Arbuthnott.
Jean Baxter (nee Smyth) was a native of Echt, and later moved to the south of England, marrying Harold Baxter and bringing up two sons. She was herself a writer of Doric poetry, publishing a collection 'A' Ae' Oo' in 1928. She was introduced to Leslie Mitchell in 1929 by the wife of Alexander Gray, Mitchell's former headmaster at Arbutnott, who later became headmaster at Echt. Mitchell dedicated 'Sunset Song' to her. |