Edwin Muir

Edwin Muir was an Orcadian poet, critic, novelist, and translator whose early prose appeared under the name Edward Moore. We Moderns: Enigmas and Guesses collects short reflections on belief, art, society, love, age, and the meaning of modern life. The first British edition was issued in 1918 under the Moore byline; a 1920 New York edition from Alfred A. Knopf carried an introduction by H. L. Mencken and identified Edwin Muir as the writer behind the pseudonym. Its compact numbered observations move between aphorism and argument rather than forming a continuous treatise. The work stands near the beginning of Muir’s substantial critical and literary career, which later encompassed poetry, fiction, autobiography, and translations made with Willa Muir. We Moderns: Enigmas and Guesses captures a young writer testing ideas in deliberately compressed form. It also documents the byline transition through which Edward Moore became publicly recognizable as Edwin Muir.