page_title: Nan Shepherd
section_title: Recognition
hierarchical_section_title: Nan Shepherd / Recognition
caption_attribution_description: English: Nan Shepherd's stone slab on Makars' Court next to the Scottish Writers' Museum in Lady Stair's Close, Edinburgh, Scotland. The following quotation is taken from The Quarry Wood (1928): It’s a grand thing to get leave to live
context_page_description: Nan Shepherd 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 Aberdeen College of Education for most of her working life.
context_section_description: 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.
caption: Nan Shepherd's stone slab outside the Writers' Museum in Edinburgh
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