In her memoir Frankly, Sturgeon recalls her experience on the streets of Govan during the General Election of 1997.
The book, due for release on Thursday this week, was put on sale by Waterstones in Glasgow for a few hours on Monday before it was promptly pulled.
Dozens of copies were displayed, and the Glasgow Times was able to purchase one.
She was the SNP candidate for Govan in the 1997 General Election a young “rising star” in the SNP.
Soon, she realised that there would be more to politics in this constituency than the issues of the day.
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She said: “I was chased away from one door with shouts of ‘Fenian B******’ ringing in my ears”.
She added that there were “whispers percolating around the constituency that I was an active supporter of the IRA.”
The former First Minister said: “ It was deeply unpleasant and an unwelcome education in the darker ‘arts’ of political campaigning.”
The MSP recalled: “Although I had grown up in Ayrshire, I had never experienced the depth of sectarianism I encountered in parts of Govan.”
She said the sectarianism was “particularly perplexing” given she had “grown up, nominally at least, as a Protestant in the Church of Scotland.”
What the abuse did was, she said, let her see what others had to endure.
She said: “It was also horribly eye-opening to (see) what the Irish Catholic community has suffered for far too long.”
The root of the abuse, she said appeared to be because her campaign team would frequent the Govan Arms Pub, which she said was known to be “strongly Celtic supporting”.