E. R. R. Linklater

Biography

Eric Robert Russell Linklater was born on March 8^th, 1899 at Penarth Glamorgan in Wales. Despite being born in Wales, he had a strong sense of Scottish heritage due to his father’s nationality and his mother’s loyalty to Scotland (though she herself wasn’t Scottish). His father, Robert Baikie Linklater was a master mariner from Orkney. His mother was Mary Elizabeth Young Linklater. As soon as Eric finished grammar school, he enlisted in the army though they turned him down for bad eyesight. However, after his father was killed in battle a few years later at Ceylon, he reenlisted and was sent to France as a sniper in the First World War. Upon returning home, Eric finished his education at Aberdeen University and graduated with an MA in English in 1925. It was during his time at Aberdeen University that he penned his first novel, though it was in 1929 that his real career as a writer started. His works were prolific.  It is said of Eric that the war left him someone who often needed change, who sought novelty and action (ODNB). As such, he traveled quite a bit, living in India (editing for the Times of India), Italy, and Korea at different points in his life.

Eric was well involved in the Scottish Renaissance in the early 1930’s. He stood as the Scottish Nationalist Candidate in a parliamentary election in 1933, the same year he married his wife, Marjorie MacIntyre. They had four children, two daughters and two sons. During the years of the Second World War, Eric worked as the directorate of public relations in the war office. After the war, Eric returned to his alma mater, Aberdeen University and there became rector. In 1971, at the end of his life he was elected into the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Eric passed away in 1974 in Aberdeen.

As a writer, Linklater wrote about his travels and experimented quite a bit with Old Norse lore, a nod to his Scottish heritage. In this vein, he often used the myth to structure his stories. Linklater’s fascination with the foreign sheds light on his choice of setting for his story “The Dancers.” The story takes place in exotic locale and involves magical native people. Besides this, the story has elements of magic in it, and the structure of the story is such that is it narrated as if it were folklore.