Excuse my dust: Nancy Brysson Morrison
I first discovered this novelist and biographer in an anthology of Scottish Women Writers. Her short story "No Letters, Please," * is a poignant, bittersweet tale of a man's alienation from his wife, which he only realises after her death. I found this short piece quite moving and decided to discover a little more about the author and her other writing.
Agnes Brysson Inglis Morrison (Nancy) (1907-1986), was one of six children born in Glasgow and educated at the Park School in the city and at Harvington College in London. Her father was a city engineer and her mother the daughter of an Edinburgh lawyer. The talented family came to be known as the 'writing Morrisons': her brother Thomas and her sister Margaret both became well-known novelists like herself. A very private person who remained unmarried, she lived with her sister Mary in the Hillhead district of Glasgow. The sisters were keen on walking, riding and attending the city's theatres, where they were fairly familiar figures in the early-to-middle part of this century. She also lived for a while in Edinburgh and London - where she died in 1986.
Edwin Muir and Compton Mackenzie praised the 'poetic power' of her prose. Her work was also much admired in America, and her novel Thea (1962) was first published in New York. However it is considered that it was her third novel "The Gowk Storm" (1933), the Book Society Choice that brought her international recognition. It was subsequently dramatised for radio and made into a film.