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Nan Shepherd

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Anna "Nan" Shepherd
Photo of a young Nan Shepherd wearing a headband
Born(1893-02-11)11 February 1893
Cults, Aberdeenshire, Scotland
Died27 February 1981(1981-02-27) (aged 88)
Woodend Hospital, Aberdeen, Scotland
OccupationAuthor, poet
LanguageEnglish, Scots
Alma materUniversity of Aberdeen
GenreNovels, poetry, non-fiction
Literary movementModernism
Notable works
  • The Quarry Wood (1928)
  • The Weatherhouse (1930)
  • A Pass in the Grampians (1933)
  • The Living Mountain (1977)

Anna "Nan" Shepherd (11 February 1893 – 27 February 1981) was a Scottish Modernist writer and poet, best known for her seminal mountain memoir, The Living Mountain, based on experiences of hill walking in the Cairngorms. This is noted as an influence by nature writers who include Robert Macfarlane and Richard Mabey.[1] She also wrote poetry and three novels set in small fictional communities in Northern Scotland. The landscape and weather of this area played a major role in her novels and provided a focus for her poetry. Shepherd served as a lecturer in English at the Aberdeen College of Education for most of her working life.[2]

Life

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Nan Shepherd was born on 11 February 1893 at Westerton Cottage, Cults, now a suburb of Aberdeen, to John and Jane Shepherd. The family were Presbyterian. Shortly after her birth, the family moved to a house named Dunvegan in the same town, where she then lived in for most of her life.[3] She attended Aberdeen High School for Girls and the University of Aberdeen, where she graduated in 1915.

Shepherd subsequently lectured in English at the Aberdeen College of Education, a now-defunct teachers' training college.[4][5] She retired from teaching in 1956, but edited the Aberdeen University Review until 1963. The university awarded her an honorary doctorate in 1964.[6]

Shepherd remained unmarried, due in part to the massive death toll of the First World War, which had an important demographic impact on her generation. In her late twenties however, she had a passionate love affair with the married philosopher John Macmurray, and the despair of this frustrated passion gave rise to confessional poetry, autobiographical reflection, and ultimately a mystical relationship with the Cairngorm Mountains. These were the foundations of her literary output.[3]

In her mid 50s she withdrew from the literary scene, but remained a friend and a supporter of other Scottish writers, including Neil M. Gunn, Marion Angus and Jessie Kesson.[3]

Nan Shepherd died shortly after her 88th birthday, on 27 February 1981 at Woodend Hospital, Aberdeen.[7]

Works

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Novels

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Shepherd was a major contributor to early Scottish Modernist literature. Her first novel, The Quarry Wood (1928) has often been compared to Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon, published four years later, as they both portray restricted, often tragic women in rural Scotland of that time.[8] Her second novel, The Weatherhouse (1930), concerns interactions between people in a small rural Scottish community.[9] Her third and final novel, A Pass in the Grampians (1933), concerns the departure of a teenage girl from a rural community for the big city.[4]

Shepherd's fiction brings out the sharp conflict between the demands of tradition and the pull of modernity, particularly in women's lives. All three novels assign a major role to the landscape and weather in small northern Scottish communities they describe.[4]

Poetry

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While a student at university, Shepherd wrote poems for the student magazine, Alma Mater, and in 1934 she published a poetry collection, In the Cairngorms.[6] This was reissued in 2015 with a new introduction by Robert Macfarlane.[10]

Non-fiction

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Shepherd was a keen hill-walker. Her love for the mountainous Grampian landscape led to a short non-fiction book The Living Mountain, written in the 1940s,[11] but published only in 1977. It is now the book for which she is best known.[12] It has been quoted as an influence by prominent nature writers such as Robert Macfarlane and Joe Simpson. The Guardian called it "the finest book ever written on nature and landscape in Britain".[13] Its functions as a memoir and field notes combine with metaphysical nature writing in the tradition of Thoreau or John Muir.[citation needed] The 2011 Canongate edition included a foreword by Robert Macfarlane and an afterword by Jeanette Winterson,[14] these were also included in the 2019 edition by the same publisher.[15] Annabel Abbs retraced Shepherd's steps through the Cairngorms for her book, Windswept: Walking in the Footsteps of Trailblazing Women (Two Roads, 2021).

Essays and further poetry

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In the years between the publication of In the Cairngorms and The Living Mountain, Shepherd placed articles and essays in magazines and journals, including the Aberdeen University Review and The Deeside Field. A selection of these, with several hitherto unpublished poems, were first collected as Wild Geese: A Collection of Nan Shepherd's Writing, published in 2019 by Galileo Publishers. This includes a short story, "Descent from the Cross", which appeared in the Scots Magazine in 1943.[16]

Recognition

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Nan Shepherd's stone slab outside the Writers' Museum in Edinburgh
Nan Shepherd on the Royal Bank of Scotland £5 note

Nan Shepherd is commemorated in Makars' Court outside the Writers' Museum, Lawnmarket, Edinburgh. Selections for such commemoration are made by The Writers' Museum, The Saltire Society and The Scottish Poetry Library.

The best-known image of Shepherd is a portrait photograph as a young woman wearing a headband and a brooch on her forehead. Shepherd had decided to have her portrait taken at a local photography studio. Whilst sitting for it, she picked up a length of photographic film, wrapped it round her head on a whim and attached a brooch to it, making her look like a Wagnerian princess.

In 2016 this was adapted as an illustration for a new series of £5 notes issued by the Royal Bank of Scotland.[17][18][19]

In 2017 a commemorative plaque was placed outside her former home, Dunvegan, in the North Deeside Road, Cults.[20]

The play Nan Shepherd: Naked and Unashamed was written by Richard Baron and Ellie Zeegen and produced in association with Kerri Andrews at Pitlochry Festival Theatre in 2024, as a co-production with Firebrand Theatre Company. It explores the 30-years-delayed publication of Shepherd's The Living Mountain.[21][22]

Nan Shepherd Prize

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The Nan Shepherd Prize has been awarded every two years since 2019. "It aims not only to celebrate nature writing but provide an inclusive platform for new and emerging nature writers from underrepresented backgrounds."[23] The winner receives a publishing deal with Canongate Books, editorial mentoring, and an advance of £10,000.[23]

Winners of the Nan Shepherd Prize
Year Author Title
2019[24] Nina Mingya Powles Small Bodies of Water
2021[25] Marchelle Farrell Uprooting: From the Caribbean to the Countryside – Finding Home in an English Garden
2023[26] Alycia Pirmohamed A Beautiful and Vital Place

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Macfarlane, Robert (27 December 2013). "How Nan Shepherd remade my vision of the Cairngorms". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 24 November 2019.
  2. ^ "Nan Shepherd | Poet". Scottish Poetry Library. Retrieved 24 November 2019.
  3. ^ a b c Peacock, Charlotte (2018). Into The Mountain: A Life of Nan Shepherd. Cambridge: GALILEO Publishers. p. 47. ISBN 978-1-903385-78-4. OCLC 1027057189.
  4. ^ a b c Ali Smith, "Shepherd, Anna (1893–1981)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, Retrieved 22 December 2013.
  5. ^ University of Aberdeen Archives, Special Collections, Records of Northern College of Education (formerly Aberdeen College of Education, Aberdeen Provincial Training Centre, Aberdeen Church of Scotland Training College and Aberdeen Free Church Training College).
  6. ^ a b "Nan Shepherd (1893–1981)". Scottish Poetry Library. Retrieved 22 December 2013..
  7. ^ Beth Dickson, "Nan Shepherd, Novelist, 1893-1981"[usurped], website of the Scottish Library and Information Council (archived).
  8. ^ Scottish Literary Tour Trust, Nan Shepherd 1893–1981 (archived)
  9. ^ Book Description. Canongate. September 1996. ASIN 0862415896 .
  10. ^ "Galileo Publishing - in the Cairngorms by Nan Shepherd -Foreword by Robert Macfarlane". Archived from the original on 14 July 2014. Retrieved 10 July 2014.
  11. ^ Shepherd, Nan. (2011). The living mountain: a celebration of the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland. Edinburgh: Canongate. ISBN 978-0-85786-183-2. OCLC 778121107.
  12. ^ Robert Macfarlane (30 August 2008). "I walk therefore I am". The Guardian. Retrieved 22 December 2013.
  13. ^ "Nan Shepherd | Justin Marozzi | Slightly Foxed literary review". Slightly Foxed. 1 December 2018. Retrieved 24 November 2019.
  14. ^ Shepherd, Nan (2011). The living mountain : a celebration of the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland. Edinburgh: Canongate. ISBN 978-0-85786-183-2. OCLC 778121107.
  15. ^ Shepherd, Nan (2019). The living mountain. Robert Macfarlane, Jeanette Winterson. Great Britain. ISBN 978-1-78689-735-0. OCLC 1084507268.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  16. ^ Shepherd, Nan (15 October 2023). Wild geese: a collection of Nan Shepherd's writing. Peacock, Charlotte. Cambridge. ISBN 978-1-912916-00-9. OCLC 1082137109.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  17. ^ "The Tony McManus Geopoetics Lecture: Nan Shepherd: An Early Geopoet by James McCarthy, Heriot Watt University 18 November 2017 – Scottish Centre for Geopoetics". www.geopoetics.org.uk. 23 November 2017. Retrieved 10 April 2018.
  18. ^ Kelly, David (26 October 2017). "Book review: Into The Mountain: A Life of Nan Shepherd, by Charlotte Peacock". The Scotsman. Retrieved 10 April 2018.
  19. ^ "Novelist and poet Nan Shepherd to appear on RBS £5 note". BBC News. 25 April 2016. Retrieved 25 April 2016.
  20. ^ Hebditch, Jon (June 2017). "Plaque to be put in place for Aberdeen poet Nan Shepherd". The Press and Journal. Retrieved 25 November 2020.
  21. ^ Brooks, Libby (19 April 2024). "Play aims to unravel mystery of poet Nan Shepherd's masterwork". The Guardian. Retrieved 20 April 2024.
  22. ^ "Nan Shepherd: Naked and Unashamed". pitlochryfestivaltheatre.com. Pitlochry Festival Theatre. 2024. Retrieved 20 April 2024.
  23. ^ a b "About". nanshepherdprize.com. The Nan Shepherd Prize. Retrieved 27 September 2024.
  24. ^ "2019 prize". nanshepherdprize.com. The Nan Shepherd Prize. Retrieved 27 September 2024.
  25. ^ "2021 Prize". nanshepherdprize.com. The Nan Shepherd Prize. Retrieved 27 September 2024.
  26. ^ "2023 Prize". nanshepherdprize.com. The Nan Shepherd Prize. Retrieved 27 September 2024.
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