Jessie Kesson: Writing Her Life

Jessie Kesson is forever associated with her first novel, the fictionalised autobiography of her early years, The White Bird Passes.. Born illegitimate in a Workhouse and raised in an Elgin slum, she was removed from her beloved but neglectful mother and sent to an orphanage in Kirkton of Skene. There she throve and shone, but was refused any chance of higher education, and ended up a year in a mental hospital. After marriage, she became a cottar wife around North East Scotland, before movi...