The Living Mountain (Canons): A Celebration of the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland: 6 - Softcover

Shepherd, Nan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0857861832 ISBN 13: 9780857861832

Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd, 2011

Synopsis

AS SEEN ON BBC'S WINTERWATCH WITH CHRIS PACKHAM AND MICHAELA STRACHAN

'The finest book ever written on nature and landscape in Britain' Guardian

In this masterpiece of nature writing, Nan Shepherd describes her journeys into the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland. There she encounters a world that can be breathtakingly beautiful at times and shockingly harsh at others. Her intense, poetic prose explores and records the rocks, rivers, creatures and hidden aspects of this remarkable landscape.

Shepherd spent a lifetime in search of the 'essential nature' of the Cairngorms; her quest led her to write this classic meditation on the magnificence of mountains, and on our imaginative relationship with the wild world around us. Composed during the Second World War, the manuscript of The Living Mountain lay untouched for more than thirty years before it was finally published.

About this title

Review:

"The finest book ever written on nature and landscape in Britain" (Guardian)

"Most works of mountain literature are written by men, and most of them focus on the goal of the summit. Nan Shepherd's aimless, sensual exploration of the Cairngorms is bracingly different" (Robert Macfarlane)

"Reading [The Living Mountain] seems to me to explain why reading is so important. And odd. And necessary. And not like anything else. There is no substitute for reading" (Jeanette Winterson)

"If you read it, you too will feel changed. This is sublime, in the 18th-century sense, when landscapes like these were terrifying. And she achieves it in language that is almost incantatory, like a spell" (Nicholas Lezard Guardian)

"A masterpiece . . . Amongst the greatest works of nature writing to come out of Britain" (Chitra Ramaswamy The Scotsman)

"I absolutely loved The Living Mountain - part memoir, part field notebook, part lyrical meditation on nature and our relationship with it, evocative of Rachel Carson and Henry Beston and John Muir" (MARIA POPOVA, ‘Brain Pickings’ New York Times)

Book Description:

Introduced by Robert Macfarlane and with an afterword by Jeanette Winterson

About this edition

• Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0857861832
• ISBN 13: 9780857861832
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160