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Nan Shepherd
Anna "Nan" Shepherd (11 February 1893 – 27 February 1981) was a Scottish Modernist writer and poet, best known for her seminal mountain memoir, ''The Living Mountain'', based on experiences of hill walking in the Cairngorms. This is noted as an influence by nature writers who include Robert Macfarlane and Richard Mabey. She also wrote poetry and three novels set in small fictional communities in Northern Scotland. The landscape and weather of this area played a major role in her novels and provided a focus for her poetry. Shepherd served as a lecturer in English at the Aberdeen College of Education for most of her working life. Life 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. Shepherd subse ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cults
In modern English, ''cult'' is usually a pejorative term for a social group that is defined by its unusual religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs and rituals, or its common interest in a particular personality, object, or goal. This sense of the term is controversial and weakly defined—having divergent definitions both in popular culture and academia—and has also been an ongoing source of contention among scholars across several fields of study. Richardson, James T. 1993. "Definitions of Cult: From Sociological-Technical to Popular-Negative." ''Review of Religious Research'' 34(4):348–56. . . An older sense of the word involves a set of religious devotional practices that are conventional within their culture, related to a particular figure, and often associated with a particular place. References to the "cult" of a particular Catholic saint, or the imperial cult of ancient Rome, for example, use this sense of the word. While the literal and original sense of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sunset Song
''Sunset Song'' is a 1932 novel by Scottish writer Lewis Grassic Gibbon. It is considered one of the most important Scottish novels of the 20th century. It is the first part of the trilogy ''A Scots Quair''. There have been several adaptations, including a 1971 television series by BBC Scotland, a 2015 film version, and some stage versions. Plot introduction The central character is a young woman, Chris Guthrie, growing up in a farming family in the fictional parish of Kinraddie in the Mearns at the start of the 20th century. Life is hard, and her family is dysfunctional. Plot summary Chris Guthrie's mother, broken by repeated childbirths and learning she is again pregnant, kills her baby twins and herself. Two younger children go to live with their aunt and uncle in Aberdeen, leaving Chris, her older brother Will, and her father to run the farm on their own. Will and his father have a stormy relationship; and Will emigrates to Argentina with his young bride, Mollie Douglas. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jeanette Winterson
Jeanette Winterson (born 27 August 1959) is an English writer. Her first book, '' Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit'', was a semi-autobiographical novel about a sensitive teenage girl rebelling against convention. Other novels explore gender polarities and sexual identity and later ones the relations between humans and technology. She broadcasts and teaches creative writing. She has won a Whitbread Prize for a First Novel, a BAFTA Award for Best Drama, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the E. M. Forster Award and the St. Louis Literary Award, and the Lambda Literary Award twice. She holds an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Early life Winterson was born in Manchester and adopted by Constance and John William Winterson on 21 January 1960. She grew up in Accrington, Lancashire, and was raised in the Elim Pentecostal Church. She was raised to become a Pente ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Afterword
An afterword is a literary device that is often found at the end of a piece of literature. It generally covers the story of how the book came into being, or of how the idea for the book was developed. An afterword may be written by someone other than the author of the book to provide enriching comment, such as discussing the work's historical or cultural context (especially if the work is being reissued many years after its original publication). See also * Conclusion * Epilogue * Foreword * Postface A postface is the opposite of a preface, a brief article or explanatory information placed at the end of a book A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of p ... * Postscript References {{Book structure Book design Literature ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Foreword
A foreword is a (usually short) piece of writing, sometimes placed at the beginning of a book or other piece of literature. Typically written by someone other than the primary author of the work, it often tells of some interaction between the writer of the foreword and the book's primary author or the story the book tells. Later editions of a book sometimes have a new foreword prepended (appearing before an older foreword if there was one), which might explain in what respects that edition differs from previous ones. When written by the author, the foreword may cover the story of how the book came into being or how the idea for the book was developed, and may include thanks and acknowledgments to people who were helpful to the author during the time of writing. Unlike a preface, a foreword is always signed. Information essential to the main text is generally placed in a set of explanatory notes, or perhaps in an introduction, rather than in the foreword or like preface. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Canongate Books
Canongate Books (trading as Canongate) is an independent publishing firm based in Edinburgh, Scotland. It is named after the Canongate area of the city. It is most recognised for publishing the Booker Prizewinner ''Life of Pi''. Canongate was named the British Book Awards Publisher of the Year in 2003 and 2009. Origins Canongate was founded in 1973 by Stephanie Wolfe Murray and her husband Angus Wolfe Murray. Originally a speciality press focusing on Scottish-interest books, generally with small print runs, its most major author was Alasdair Gray. In 1994 it was purchased from the receiver in a management buyout led by Jamie Byng, using funds provided by his stepfather Christopher Bland and his father-in-law Charlie McVeigh, and began to publish more general works, including the '' Pocket Canons'' editions of books of the Bible, as well as the ''Payback Press'' and '' Rebel Inc.'' imprints. Byng is now the Publisher and Managing Director of the company. In June 2010 it was anno ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Muir
John Muir ( ; April 21, 1838December 24, 1914), also known as "John of the Mountains" and "Father of the National Parks", was an influential Scottish-American naturalist, author, environmental philosopher, botanist, zoologist, glaciologist, and early advocate for the preservation of wilderness in the United States of America. His letters, essays, and books describing his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada, have been read by millions. His activism helped to preserve the Yosemite Valley and Sequoia National Park, and his example has served as an inspiration for the preservation of many other wilderness areas. The Sierra Club, which he co-founded, is a prominent American conservation organization. In his later life, Muir devoted most of his time to the preservation of the Western forests. As part of the campaign to make Yosemite a national park, Muir published two landmark articles on wilderness preservation in ''The Century Magazine'', "The Treasures of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817May 6, 1862) was an American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher. A leading Transcendentalism, transcendentalist, he is best known for his book ''Walden'', a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay "Civil Disobedience (Thoreau), Civil Disobedience" (originally published as "Resistance to Civil Government"), an argument for disobedience to an unjust state. Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry amount to more than 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions are his nature writing, writings on natural history and philosophy, in which he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern-day environmentalism. His literary language, literary style interweaves close observation of nature, personal experience, pointed rhetoric, symbolic meanings, and historical lore, while displaying a poetic sensibility, philosophical Asceticism, austerity, and attent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nature Writing
Nature writing is nonfiction or fiction prose or poetry about the natural environment. Nature writing encompasses a wide variety of works, ranging from those that place primary emphasis on natural history facts (such as field guides) to those in which philosophical interpretation predominate. It includes natural history essays, poetry, essays of solitude or escape, as well as travel and adventure writing. Nature writing often draws heavily on scientific information and facts about the natural world; at the same time, it is frequently written in the first person and incorporates personal observations of and philosophical reflections upon nature. Modern nature writing traces its roots to the works of natural history that were popular in the second half of the 18th century and throughout the 19th. An important early figure was the "parson-naturalist" Gilbert White (1720–1793), a pioneering English naturalist and ornithologist. He is best known for his '' Natural History and Ant ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust. The trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of ''The Guardian'' in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of ''The Guardian'' free from commercial or political interference". The trust was converted into a limited company in 2008, with a constitution written so as to maintain for ''The Guardian'' the same protections as were built into the structure of the Scott Trust by its creators. Profits are reinvested in journalism rather than distributed to owners or shareholders. It is considered a newspaper of record in the UK. The editor-in-chief Katharine Viner succeeded Alan Rusbridger in 2015. Since 2018, the paper's main news ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joe Simpson (mountaineer)
Joe Simpson (born 1960) is a British mountaineer, author, and motivational speaker. While climbing in Peru in 1985, he suffered severe injuries and was assumed dead by his climbing companion after falling into a crevasse, but he survived and managed to crawl back to his base camp. He described the ordeal in his 1988 book '' Touching the Void'', which was adapted into a 2003 documentary film of the same name. Early life Simpson was born on 13 April 1960 to a Scottish father and an Irish mother, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where his father was stationed with the British Army. From the age of 8, Simpson travelled between schools in Britain and various countries where his father was stationed. Simpson began rock climbing after being introduced to the sport at Peak Scar on the Hambleton Hills in north-eastern Yorkshire by a teacher at Ampleforth College. He was 14 when he read '' The White Spider'' by Heinrich Harrer, about the first ascent of the North Face of the Eiger by Harre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cairngorm Mountains
The Cairngorms ( gd, Am Monadh Ruadh) are a mountain range in the eastern Highlands of Scotland closely associated with the mountain Cairn Gorm. The Cairngorms became part of Scotland's second national park (the Cairngorms National Park) on 1 September 2003. Although the Cairngorms give their name to, and are at the heart of, the Cairngorms National Park, they only form one part of the national park, alongside other hill ranges such as the Angus Glens and the Monadhliath, and lower areas like Strathspey. The Cairngorms consists of high plateaux at about above sea level, above which domed summits (the eroded stumps of once much higher mountains ) rise to around . Many of the summits have tors, free-standing rock outcrops that stand on top of the boulder-strewn landscape. In places, the edges of the plateau form steep cliffs of granite and they are excellent for skiing, rock climbing and ice climbing. The Cairngorms form an arctic-alpine mountain environment, with tundra-lik ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
