Wild Geese

Edited by Charlotte Peacock

Nan Shepherd (1893 – 1981) published three novels between 1928 and 1933: The Quarry Wood, The Weatherhouse and A Pass in the Grampians – as well as a collection of poems: In the Cairngorms.

Her reputation grew exponentially with the 1977 publication of The Living Mountain, now regarded as a classic of landscape writing.

However, much of her work (including a short story, Descent from the Cross) was never published outside local magazines and journals, and are reprinted here in Wild Geese for the first time in book form. Some of her poems in this volume also appear here for the first time; they were found by Charlotte Peacock while researching her Nan Shepherd biography, Into the Mountain.

There are also some extraordinary examples of Nan’s nature writing in exponentially, which can now be seen to contain the seeds of the writing which flowered in The Living Mountain.

Wild Geese will be enjoyed by every one of Nan Shepherd’s huge and growing readership, and will no doubt also provide a signpost to all her other works now available.

Author

NAN SHEPHERD (1893–1981) was born in Peterculter, near Aberdeen. After graduating from the University of Aberdeen in 1915 (which awarded her an honorary doctorate in 1964), she taught English at the College of Education until her retirement in 1956. Between 1928 and 1933 she published three novels – The Quarry Wood, The Weatherhouse and A Pass in the Grampians – set in small communities in the north-east of Scotland. Her reputation grew further with the 1977 publication of The Living Mountain, now widely regarded as a classic of landscape writing. In the Cairngorms, her only book of poems, was first published in 1934.