Canonical

    I mentioned Canongate Books' pop-up shop last night, and part of the shop's purpose is to launch The Canons, a collection of twelve classic titles from the backlist which have been given a fresh design and new introductions.

    Two of the books particularly caught my eye, firstly The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd, with an introduction by Robert Macfarlane (author of the marvellous The Wild Places - post on it here) who says, "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."

    Originally published in 1977 more than forty years after it was written, this book describes in "intense, poetic prose" the landscape Nan Shepherd knew so well and whose "essential nature" she sought to capture in words.

    The People of the Sea: Celtic Tales of the Seal-Folk by David Thomson is introduced by Seamus Heaney, and he remarks "Readers will be carried away on successive waves of pleasure ... these stories have an irresistible holistic beauty".

    In the late 1940s, David Thomson, whose Woodbrook you may know, "explored the western fringe of Europe from the Shetland Islands to the coast of Kerry" and came "only just in time to hear the last remnants of pre-Christian culture". He was in search of the legends of the selchies or selkies, creatures who transform themselves from seals into humans, and in this collection of Celtic myth and folklore, he tells the stories he was told there.

    I've been browsing through both books today, and passages in each have grabbed me and made me want to go on reading; for now that pleasure will have to wait.

Comments

[Barbara B]

Why has nobody commented on this? I love The People of the Sea, I have an old paperback copy and I've been meaning to get the Nan Shepherd for ages.
Barbara B

[Cornflower]

I pounced on those books when I saw them as they looked like treasures!

[LizF]

I love the sound of both these books especially The People of the Sea. My Dad's family are from the west of Ireland and I can remember my paternal grandfather telling me the stories that he grew up with in Kerry in the late 19th and early 20th century. Selkies featured quite a lot in those stories and I have always been fascinated by the legends around them.
Thanks for such an interesting post - even if it is going to end up costing me even more money!