Margaret Elphinstone

The Early Novels

The Incomer or Clachanpluck, Sparrow's Flight and Islanders have all been republished by Kennedy & Boyd.

Islanders
Islanders opens with a shipwreck on Fridarey (Fair Isle) off the north of Scotland in the 12th century, when the island was under Norse rule. The only survivor, Astrid, is washed ashore and taken in by an island family. She is determined to leave as she struggles against unfamiliar ways and traditions in a small community, riven with familial tension and conflict.

Originally published by Polygon, Edinburgh 1994. 452pp. ISBN 0748661786. Now republished by Kennedy & Boyd

A Sparrow’s Flight
A novel in a kind of future which bears a strong resemblance to the past. Two travellers, Naomi and Thomas, embark on a month-long journey which parallels the inner journey that each has also to make. The journey forms a spiral: it takes the characters into the heart of a wasteland - a combination of actual place, literary mythology and the realisation of contemporary fears.

Originally published by Polygon, Edinburgh 1989. 227pp. ISBN 0748660259. Now republished by Kennedy & Boyd

An extract from this novel, From A Sparrow’s Flight, was published in P. Kravitz (ed.),
The Picador Book of Contemporary Scottish Fiction (Picador 1997) pp. 223-235

The Incomer or Clachanpluck

Originally published by Women's Press, London 1987. 229pp. ISBN 0704340704. Now republished by Kennedy & Boyd

A passage from The Incomer, has been set to music by Lesley Lear and Gilly Fordham - www.primrose-music.co.uk - in a choral piece entitled The Hope of the Land. This was first performed at Il Piccolo Coro: A centenary celebration of Tippett and his contemporaries at Holy Trinity Church, Stroud, in February 2005.
Listen to The Hope of the Land (wma format)
or in mp3 format


The Hope of the Land

In the beginning was the land, sufficient to itself.
It flourished through timeless years and nourished itself,
Drawing water down from the sky and offering the same water back to the sea.
Earth and air, fire and water, drew together and offered their own being that the land might be.
People were brought to birth by the land, and took so much of the gift of knowledge
That they were given also the power to perceive, and change the world.
They explored, and the possibilities were limitless.
They created space and time, and where there had been only infinity there were now lines and limitations.
And the people began to fear what lay beyond the boundaries they had made.
The threat they'd created pressed against the boundaries and pushed through.
Thinking that all was destroyed, they set about destroying it.
The hope of the land was all that was left, the dream of the land was untouched.
The land was not confounded by space and time.
The land is the creator and nurtures all.
The only way to destruction is the destruction of the land.
The elements that created the land live in our bodies.
We are born, we bring to birth, and we die, and the land takes us.
What is done to us is also done to the land, and what is done to the land is also done to us.
There is nothing else.
Margaret Elphinstone

Short stories

An Apple From a Tree

An Apple From a Tree is a collection of short stories originally published by Women's Press, London 1991. 261pp.ISBN 0704342812. It has now been republished with additional material by Kennedy & Boyd
Short stories from this collection have been reprinted in Scottish Literature in The Twentieth Century: An Anthology, Scottish Writers in Bulgaria 2001, An Anthology of Scottish Literature, The Oxford Book of Short Stories 1995,
Within the Hollow Hills 1994, The Book of Myth and Magic 1992.

Recent Writing

In Waylaid by Islands, published in the November 2007 edition of The Bottle Imp, Margaret Elphinstone recounts her enthusiasm for the islands, real and imagined, which feature prominently in several of her novels.

Her short story The King's Daughter of Norroway appears in the collection Sea Stories published in 2007 by the National Maritime Museum to mark its 70th anniversary.

Margaret Elphinstone's short story On the Run appears in Cleave, the compilation of short fiction, non-fiction and poetry by women who live in or otherwise ‘belong to’ Scotland, recently published by Two Ravens Press.

Gardening

With J. Langley The Holistic Gardener (London: Thorsons 1987) 335 pp.

This book was re-issued as The Green Gardener’s Handbook (London: Thorsons 1990, 2nd ed. 1997), then as The Organic Gardener’s Handbook (London: Harper Collins 1995)
Organic Gardening (London: Greenprint 1990) 151 pp.








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