"I was born before the Industrial Revolution, and am now about two hundred years old. But I have skipped a hundred and fifty of them. I was really born in 1737, and till I was fourteen no time-accidents happened to me. Then in 1751 I set out from Orkney for Glasgow. When I arrived I found that it was not 1751, but 1901, and that a hundred and fifty years had been burned up in my two day's journey. But I myself was still in 1751, and remained there for a long time. All my life since I have been trying to overhaul that invisible leeway. No wonder I am obsessed with Time." Extract from a Diary 1937-9
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1887 | Birth, Deerness, Orkneys |
| 1901 | Arrival in Glasgow |
| 1913 | Begins to contribute to A R Orage's New Age |
| 1918 | First Publication, We Moderns (Collection of aphorisms) |
| 1919 | Marriage to Willa Anderson, London |
| 1919 | Undergoes Jungian analysis by Maurice Nicoll |
| 1921 | First year in Prague |
| 1922 | Year in Dresden and at international school at Hellerau |
| 1923 | Italy, Salzburg and Vienna |
| 1924 | Return to England |
| 1925 | Publication of First Poems |
| 1927 | Publication of the novel, The Marionette |
| 1935 | Publication of Scottish Journey |
| 1935 | Translation into english by Willa & Edwin Muir of Kafka's Metamorphosis |
| 1936 | Controversial rejection of non-English Scottish literature in Scott and Scotland |
| 1940 | Publication of first autobiography, The Story and the Fable |
| 1946 | Appointed Director of British Council, Prague |
| 1949 | Appointed Director of British Council, Rome |
| 1950 | Appointed Warden of Newbattle Abbey College |
| 1954 | Publication of An Autobiography |
| 1955 | Appointed Norton Professor of English, Harvard University |
| 1956 | Return to England |
| 1959 | Death, Swaffham Priory, Cambridge |
| 1960 | Publication of Collected Poems |
| 1965 | Publication of Selected Poems, edited by T.S. Eliot |
| Year | Publication |
|---|---|
| 1918 | We Moderns: Enigmas and Guesses |
| 1924 | Latitudes |
| 1925 | First Poems |
| 1926 | Transition: Essays on Contemporary Literature |
| 1926 | Chorus of the Newly Dead |
| 1927 | The Marionette |
| 1928 | The Structure of the Novel |
| 1929 | John Knox: Portrait of a Calvinist |
| 1931 | The Three Brothers |
| 1932 | Six Poems |
| 1932 | Poor Tom |
| 1934 | Variations on a Time Theme |
| 1935 | Scottish Journey |
| 1935 | Social Credit and the Labour Party |
| 1936 | Scott and Scotland: The Predicament of the Scottish Writer |
| 1937 | Journeys and Places |
| 1939 | The Present Age from 1914 |
| 1940 | The Story and the Fable: An Autobiography |
| 1940 | Yesterday's Mirror, Afterthoughts of an Autobiography (Scots Magazine, Sept 1940) |
| 1943 | The Narrow Place |
| 1946 | The Scots and their Country |
| 1946 | The Voyage |
| 1949 | The Labyrinth |
| 1949 | Essays on Literature and Society |
| 1952 | Collected Poems 1921-1951 |
| 1954 | Prometheus |
| 1954 | An Autobiography |
| 1956 | One Foot in Eden |
| 1960 | Collected Poems 1921-1958 |
| 1962 | The Estate of Poetry |
| 1963 | Collected Poems |
| 1965 | Selected Poems, ed. T.S. Eliot |
| 1974 | Selected Letters of Edwin Muir, ed P.H. Butter |
| 1982 | Edwin Muir: Uncollected Scottish Criticism, ed. A Noble |