# Is "The Living Mountain" by Nan Shepherd a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd (Aberdeen University Press, 1977) is identified by: True first is the Aberdeen University Press printing of 1977, catalogued by dealers as 'first edition, first impression' with no later-impression line; the manuscript was written c.1944-45 and sat unpublished until Shepherd was 84. UK only; there was no US edition of the period.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- True first is the Aberdeen University Press printing of 1977, catalogued by dealers as 'first edition, first impression' with no later-impression line; the manuscript was written c.1944-45 and sat unpublished until Shepherd was 84
- Critically, the first edition was NOT issued in cloth with a jacket but in original white pictorial wrappers (softcover) with the title and cover illustration printed in purple, and it contains 12 full-page black-and-white illustrations and a map by Ian Munro
- It is a genuinely scarce, small print run (WorldCat records no North American library holdings)
- Because it is a wrappers issue there is no dust jacket or jacket-price point to check; the granular binding/illustration description rests principally on Peter Harrington's cataloguing, while the Aberdeen-University-Press-1977 true-first fact is broadly corroborated
- Publisher imprint reads Aberdeen University Press
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Nan Shepherd |
| Publisher | Aberdeen University Press |
| Year | 1977 |
| True first | UK edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | True first is the Aberdeen University Press printing of 1977, catalogued by dealers as 'first edition, first impression' with no… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
True first is the Aberdeen University Press printing of 1977, catalogued by dealers as 'first edition, first impression' with no later-impression line; the manuscript was written c.1944-45 and sat unpublished until Shepherd was 84. Critically, the first edition was NOT issued in cloth with a jacket but in original white pictorial wrappers (softcover) with the title and cover illustration printed in purple, and it contains 12 full-page black-and-white illustrations and a map by Ian Munro. It is a genuinely scarce, small print run (WorldCat records no North American library holdings). Because it is a wrappers issue there is no dust jacket or jacket-price point to check; the granular binding/illustration description rests principally on Peter Harrington's cataloguing, while the Aberdeen-University-Press-1977 true-first fact is broadly corroborated.

## Is this the true first?
UK only; there was no US edition of the period. The sole true first is the 1977 Aberdeen University Press wrappers issue. Every Canongate edition (notably the 2011 issue carrying Robert Macfarlane's introduction, plus subsequent Canongate printings) is a later reprint, not the first, and Canongate copies are the ubiquitous ones in the trade.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club issue of the 1977 original is documented. Reprint tell: any Canongate imprint, any printed ISBN/barcode, or the added subtitle 'a celebration of the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland' marks a post-2008 reissue rather than the 1977 Aberdeen University Press first.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Living Mountain* by Nan Shepherd a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-living-mountain
CC BY 4.0. Part of the Canonical First-Edition Points of Issue dataset (https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/api/first-edition-titles.json). Last reviewed 2026-07-04.