AN EXHIBITION is celebrating the fascinating life and work of a Black Isle author Jane Duncan, who wrote in secret and hid her manuscripts in a linen cupboard.
The exhibition is now showing at the Cromarty Courthouse Museum to mark the centenary of her birth. The unknown writer leapt to fame in the 1950s when seven of her novels were accepted by publishers Macmillan in 1959, a feat almost unheard of in publishing circles at that time, and which attracted national press coverage.
Renton-born Duncan was eventually forced to send her work to a London agent to fund medical costs after her husband fell seriously ill while they were living in Jamaica. Sadly he died not long after.
Now, to mark the centenary, Cheshire-based Millrace will reprint her book, My Friends the Miss Boyds, which was the first to appear in print.
The story is set at the end of World War I in the Black Isle where her grandparents had run a croft.
She was a policeman's daughter, brought up in the Glasgow area, and whose real name was Elizabeth Jane Cameron.
Viv Cripps, of Millrace, has been a long-time fan of Duncan's work and one of her friends at Edinburgh University married the writer's nephew.
She said the reprint would be launched in Inverness on June 24.
Other centenary events are planned by local groups, including the Kirkmichael Trust which looks after the Kirkmichael kirk and graveyard in the Black Isle, where Duncan was buried following her death in 1976. The My Friends series eventually ran to 19 books. The author also wrote children's books.
During World War II she had served in a photographic intelligence unit.
The descriptions of life from around 1915 to the 1930s caught the imagination of the courthouse trustees and have been blended with historic fact to provide an insight into rural life at that time, including descriptions of harvest homecomings, celebrations at the big house, meeting the coal boat with Clydesdales and farm carts all cleaned and polished for the occasion and Bella Beagle the fish seller travelling the district to sell her wares.
Trustees chairwoman Caroline Vawdrey said: “It is exciting to see the past so vividly brought to life by Jane Duncan’s descriptions and incredible to think how much has changed in the past century.
“For all those many changes, the Black Isle still has a strong sense of community and I think that visitors to the exhibition will warmly relate to the life she evokes.”
The courthouse is open Sunday to Thursday, 11am to 4pm, until the end of September.