Last year we were honoured to receive an accession of great cultural significance. The papers of Scottish writer and author of the novel The Dear Green Place, Archie Hind, were thought lost by the Scottish Literature community but our colleague Dr Eleanor Bell, Department of Humanities, made contact with the family and discovered that they still existed. Eleanor liaised with the family to arrange the transfer of the collection to the University of Strathclyde Archives and Special Collections for safe keeping.
The collection includes correspondence with family, friends, colleagues and publishers; photographs; scrapbooks; and manuscripts of Hind’s writing including The Dear Green Place, as well as a number of plays. Eleanor anticipates a wealth of research potential:
‘Archie Hind (1928-2008) is perhaps best known for his 1966 novel, The Dear Green Place. The literary importance of the novel was quickly recognised, both in Scotland and beyond, winning both the Guardian Fiction Prize and the Yorkshire Post Best Fiction of the Year. While The Dear Green Place is widely regarded as one of the most important Scottish novels of the twentieth century, few resources exist on Hind’s work. The manuscript of his famous novel has often assumed to be lost, or perhaps burned. So, imagine our excitement when we discovered that not only was the manuscript still in existence, but also many other significant papers relating to his life and work.
I have been teaching The Dear Green Place for many years as part of my undergraduate module on ‘The Glasgow Novel’. One of the most compelling aspects of the text for students is that it tells the story of a writer, Mat Craig, struggling to write his own Glasgow novel. Up until now I’ve never been able to tell the students very much about Hind. It has therefore been a real privilege to spend time with Archie’s family over the past year and to find out more about the context of his life and work.
As implied by its title, The Dear Green Place demonstrates a deep connection with, as well as a deep love for, the city of Glasgow. However, its vision is far from romantic. The first page of the novel sets the scene for the early years of post-industrialism in the city:
‘Beyond the railway embankment lay stretches of derelict land of the kind seen on the edges of big cities. Broken down furnaces and kilns were still crumbling around where the claypits had once been worked. This derelict area was divided in part by brick walls, in part by some bits of drystone dyke, in part by some straggly hawthorn.’
At the heart of the novel is the question of whether Glasgow in fact offers the conditions for the artist to flourish (reminiscent of the famous lines from Alasdair Gray’s Lanark, ‘What is Glasgow to most of us?’ – though it’s important to note that Hind’s novel was published fifteen years earlier). The novel examines the artistic struggles of Mat, his agonising over what it means to be a writer, what it means to create an authentic work of art. This is set against his material struggle to find the time to write whilst also earning enough money to support his family. This is explored most sensationally when Mat takes a job at the local slaughterhouse, a section of the novel which is not for the faint-hearted. Mat’s quest is a fraught, existential one: ironically, the further he goes on this journey, the further this takes him from being able to complete his novel. Despite its many autobiographical parallels, thankfully Archie Hind managed to do so on Mat’s behalf.
Over the next few years, we are planning a series of events and publications leading up to Archie’s centenary year in 2028. There is much to explore, and this blog series will provide updates on our research findings along the way. As well as exploring the context of his life and work, we will also be examining Archie’s literary friendships with many writers including Edwin and Willa Muir, Alasdair Gray, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Jean Ure – to name just a few. Piecing together the history of Hind’s life via the papers donated provides a fascinating cultural history of literature and the arts in Scotland from the 1960s through to the end of the century. There are many pieces of this jigsaw just waiting to be put together.’
If you have any memories or papers relating to the life and work of Archie Hind, we would love to hear from you (eleanor.bell@strath.ac.uk).
The family are as delighted as we are with the papers being looked after at the University of Strathclyde:
"It took a while for us to gather together Archie’s work as it was scattered everywhere among family photos, papers, boxes and even amongst piano partitions. Our parents weren’t known for their executive function skills but they had kept more than we had hoped for, albeit in a haphazard manner.
We had almost given up the search for someone or somewhere to take it as several places had been contacted but had come to nothing. We found Dr Bell by a series of fortunate events and a chance meeting - just as the boxes of old papers were about to be packed away into yet another dusty cupboard, to lie around for another few decades. This would have been such a shame as there were some very interesting bits and pieces. Dr. Bell was the first person we approached who responded with genuine enthusiasm, interest and curiosity.
So, we are delighted and proud as a family that our father’s body of work is now an archive and in the safe hands of Strathclyde University and Dr Bell. We look forward to seeing how this archive evolves. We believe that Archie would have appreciated all this and we, his family, are hugely proud that finally his work will now become accessible, can be shared and ultimately valued.”
Left to right: Archie’s son Calum Hind, grandson, Sean Hind, Rachael Jones, Archie’s daughter Sheila Hind and Eleanor Bell.
The papers must be processed before they can be accessible to researchers, but we are greatly looking forward to collaborating with Eleanor this year on a funding bid to fully catalogue and research this important literary archive.
The collection will join our other Glasgow-focused collections at the University of Strathclyde including the Robertson Special Collection of printed works about the history and descriptions of Glasgow, and also the Glasgow Novel Collection: fictional works in which the city of Glasgow is an integral element or theme.
Stay tuned to our blog where we will share exciting news and developments in the Archie Hind Centenary Project.
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