First US edition of Nan Shepherd’s novel The Weatherhouse (1930) with a rare inscription by the author. Acquired by University of Aberdeen Museums & Special Collections in 2022 with a grant of £750 from the National Fund for Acquisitions, funded by the Scottish Government.
Key Modernist. Influential Scottish writer. Trail-blazing feminist. The author Anna ‘Nan’ Shepherd (1893-1981) could lay claim to being all three.
Nan was a native of Cults, Deeside in Aberdeenshire. She graduated from the University of Aberdeen in 1915 and spent most of her professional life as a lecturer in English at Aberdeen Training Centre for Teachers (later the College of Education). A busy post-retirement career saw Shepherd edit the Aberdeen University Review and lend support to many emerging Scottish talents, such as Marion Angus (1865-1946) and Jessie Kesson (1916-1994).
A passionate and life-long devotee of hill-walking in the Cairngorms, Shepherd was the author of the acclaimed memoir The Living Mountain. Seamlessly blending autobiography and evocative descriptions of the landscape, it was completed in 1945 and finally published in 1977. She was also an accomplished poet and the author of three novels.
The Weatherhouse (1930), Shepherd’s second novel, has been described by Roderick Watson, Professor Emeritus at the University of Stirling, as ‘by far her most complex and subtle achievement’. Set in the fictional North-East Scotland community of Fetter-Rothnie, like all Shepherd’s work it draws heavily on a keen sense of observation. The story traces the interactions of a cast of mostly female characters in the aftermath of the First World War, and how their lives are impacted by the return of men from the Front. The book reflects Nan’s own experience as an unmarried woman, at a time when female status was still defined within the maxims of a patriarchal society.
Thanks to assistance from the National Fund for Acquisitions, the University of Aberdeen Museums & Special Collections has just acquired a fine copy, in its original dustjacket, of the first US edition of The Weatherhouse, published by E P Dutton & Company, New York. There is an inscription from Shepherd to her housekeeper, Mary Lawson, on the front flyleaf. Nan cared for both Lawson and her own mother in old age until their deaths.
Shepherd was recognised in 2000 with a commemorative paving slab at Edinburgh’s Makars’ Court, bearing a line from her novel The Quarry Wood: ‘It’s a grand thing to get leave to live’. As testament to her enduring influence, Shepherd’s portrait and this quotation also feature on the current Royal Bank of Scotland £5 note.
Dr Keith M C O’Sullivan
Senior Rare Books Librarian
University of Aberdeen
National Fund for Acquisitions 