Nan Shepherd''s star continues to rise, year on year, and her meditation on the Cairngorms, The Living Mountain, has established itself as an all time classic of nature literature. Selected Prose and Poetry of Nan Shepherd brings together the two Galileo books, In the Cairngorms (the poetry) and Wild Geese (A novella, ''The Descent of Man,'' and a collection of prose pieces, some biographical, some general). Both books will continue to be available separately in trade paperback editions, but this beautiful hardback, with illustrations taken from the first edition (1977 Aberdeen University Press) of The Living Mountain, will make a superb gift edition of a very important section of her work. Her poetry was said to be her most cherished achievement, and the novella in this collection is absolutely of the same quality of the three novels which originally gave birth to her literary reputation long before the publication of The Living Mountain.