The Writers’ Museum is now exhibiting two beautiful manuscript illustrated magazines produced in Edinburgh by Christine Orr and friends between 1911 and 1916. Born in 1899 Orr was a hugely important contributor to Edinburgh’s cultural landscape and was a founding member of the Fringe, publishing poems, plays and 18 novels during her lifetime – despite her name being little known today.
Talks and Tales: The Childhood Writing of Christine Orr reveals the budding talent of a woman who could be considered worthy of inclusion in the roll call of authors of the Scottish Literary Renaissance, as well as providing a fascinating glimpse of middle-class Edinburgh during WWI.
A contemporary of Neil Gunn, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Naomi Mitchison and Nan Shepherd, her first novel, The Glorious Thing (1919), set in Edinburgh during WWI and published when she was only 20, was republished in 2013 by MSc Publishing students at Napier University as part of the commemoration of the centenary of WWI.
As well as publishing numerous plays and writing for BBC Radio, Orr formed amateur theatre companies in Edinburgh including the Christine Orr Players, The Makars and, with her husband, Robin Stark, the Unicorn Players. In 1947 they staged a play to coincide with the Edinburgh International Festival and became known as one of the ‘uninvited eight’ who kick-started the Festival Fringe.
The exhibition will feature two of the manuscript magazines along with a short story written by Orr, some of her personal possessions, such as a pencil box and inkwell, and a selection of her published works. This will be the first public display of this material and the aim is to celebrate the achievements of a woman who was once a principal player in Edinburgh’s cultural life, to generate further interest and awareness in her work and secure the legacy she rightly deserved.
21 August 2019 – 22 March 2020 Writers’ Museum – Edinburgh