NanShepherd was a Scottish Modernist writer and poet. She is best known for her seminal mountain memoir, The Living Mountain, based on her experiences of hill walking in the Cairngorms. This is quoted as an influence by many nature writers, including Robert Macfarlane and Richard Mabey. She also wrote poetry and three novels set in small fictional communities in North Scotland. The Scottish landscape and weather played a major role in her novels and provided focus for her poetry. Shepherd was a lecturer in English at the AberdeenCollege of Education for most of her working life.
Life
Anna "Nan" Shepherd was born on 11 February 1893 at Westerton Cottage, Cults, now a suburb of Aberdeen, to John and Jane Shepherd. Shortly after her birth, the family moved to Dunvegan, Cults, the house she then lived in for most of her life. She attended Aberdeen High School for Girls and graduated from the University of Aberdeen in 1915. She subsequently lectured with the Aberdeen College of Education. Shepherd retired from teaching in 1956, but edited the Aberdeen University Review until 1963. The university awarded her an honorary doctorate in 1964. She remained a friend and supporter of other Scottish writers, including Neil M. Gunn, Marion Angus and Jessie Kesson. Nan Shepherd died on 27 February 1981 at Woodend Hospital, Aberdeen
Works
Novels
Shepherd was a major contributor to early Scottish Modernist literature. Her first novel, The Quarry Wood has often been compared to Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon, which was published four years later, as they both portray the restricted, often tragic lives of women in the Scotland of that period. Her second novel, The Weatherhouse concerns the interactions between people in a small Scottish community. Her third and final novel, A Pass in the Grampians, appeared in 1933. Shepherd's fiction brings out the clash between the demands of tradition and the pull of modernity, particularly in the nature of women's lives in a changing time. The landscape and weather play a major role in all three novels, which are set in small northern Scottish communities.
Poetry
Shepherd was a keen hill-walker. Her poetry expresses her love for the mountainous Grampian landscape. While a student at university, Shepherd wrote poems for the student magazine, Alma Mater, but it was not until 1934 that an anthology of her poetry, In the Cairngorms, was published. This volume was reissued in April 2014 by Galileo Publishers, Cambridge, with a new introduction by Robert Macfarlane.
Non-fiction
Shepherd's short non-fiction book, The Living Mountain was written in the 1940s. It reflects her experiences walking in the Cairngorm Mountains. Having completed it, Shepherd chose not to publish it until 1977. This book is the one for which she is now best known. It has been quoted as an influence by influential nature writers, including Robert Macfarlane and Joe Simpson. It was described in The Guardian as "the finest book ever written on nature and landscape in Britain". The book combines memoir and field notes with metaphysical nature writing, in the tradition of Thoreau or John Muir.
In the years between the publication of In the Cairngorms and The Living Mountain, Shepherd published articles and essays in local magazines and journals, including the Aberdeen University Review and The Deeside Field. A selection of these, along with several hitherto unpublished poems of Shepherd's, have now been collected for the first time into one volume: Wild Geese: A Collection of Nan Shepherd's Writing, published in 2019 by Galileo Publishers. Included is her short story "Descent from the Cross", which appeared in the Scots Magazine in 1943.
Recognition
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 of her 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 reportedly picked up a length of photographic film and wrapped it around her head on a whim, and attached a brooch, making herself 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. In 2017 a commemorative plaque was placed outside her former home, Dunvegan, on the North Deeside Road, Cults.
