“A BLOODY WONDERFUL BOOK” (ERNEST HEMINGWAY): WEST WITH THE NIGHT, SIGNED IN THE YEAR OF PUBLICATION BY AVIATION PIONEER BERYL MARKHAM

MARKHAM, Beryl. West With the Night. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1942. Octavo, original green cloth, original dust jacket.

First edition, signed and dated June 1942 by Markham, the first aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic from London to North America.

“After years of bush flying in Kenya and locating big game by air for safaris, Markham returned to England, where she… [decided] to try for the prize of flying solo from London to New York. Such a flight had never been accomplished because it meant flying against the prevailing winds… For the trip she borrowed an airplane— a single-engine Vega Gull with a 200-horsepower engine— that could fly up to 163 miles per hour and that was fitted with extra tanks so it could travel 3800 miles without refueling. The plane had no radio equipment, however, so contact with Markham would be impossible once she took off. Markham left London at 8:00 P.M. on September 4, 1936, facing a strong head wind, low clouds and blustery weather… A telephone call from a small town in Nova Scotia finally brought news of the aviator. She had survived her trip, but the plane had crash-landed in a peat bog. With the nose of the plane stuck in the mud, she had climbed out and greeted two fishermen by saying, ‘I’m Mrs. Markham. I've just flown from England… News services carried the report throughout the world, and she was hailed as a heroine… In 1939 Markham moved to the United States… Her book, West With the Night, was published in 1942 and was favorably received… [The book] tells the story of Markham’s childhood in Kenya, her unconventional career as a bush pilot and her pioneering transatlantic flight… the book continues to be a classic account of growing up in Kenya” (Gale Group). Ernest Hemingway wrote in a letter to editor Maxwell Perkins: “Did you read Beryl Markham’s book, West with the Night? I knew her fairly well in Africa and never would have suspected that she could and would put pen to paper except to write in her flyer’s log book. As it is, she has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished on the job and some times making an okay pig pen. But [she]… can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers. The only parts of it that I know about personally, on account of having been there at the time and heard the other people’s stories, are absolutely true… I wish you would get it and read it because it is really a bloody wonderful book.” Bookplate.

Interior fine; light rubbing to cloth extremities. Mild wear to extremities of price-clipped dust jacket with chipping to top folds, affecting author’s name at spine head, tape reinforcements to verso. A near-fine copy in an extremely good dust jacket, scarce signed.