The Goshawk
Penguin Main Series 1931. 1st Edition, published 1963.
T.H. White, the author of The Once and Future King, was a young writer who found himself rifling through old handbooks of falconry. White wrote to Germany to acquire a young goshawk. Gos, as White named the bird, was ferocious and Gos was free, and White had no idea how to break him in beyond the ancient (and, though he did not know it, long superseded) practice of depriving him of sleep, which meant that he, White, also went without rest. Slowly man and bird entered a state of delirium and intoxication, of attraction and repulsion that looks very much like love. White kept a daybook describing his volatile relationship with Gos — at once a tale of obsession, a comedy of errors, and a hymn to the hawk. It was this that became The Goshawk, one of modern literature's most memorable and surprising encounters with the wilderness — as it exists both within us and without.
Condition grading: Very good. Two small marks to bottom section of front cover. Slightly tanned spine. Binding tight. The photographs form part of the description.
Penguin Main Series 1931. 1st Edition, published 1963.
T.H. White, the author of The Once and Future King, was a young writer who found himself rifling through old handbooks of falconry. White wrote to Germany to acquire a young goshawk. Gos, as White named the bird, was ferocious and Gos was free, and White had no idea how to break him in beyond the ancient (and, though he did not know it, long superseded) practice of depriving him of sleep, which meant that he, White, also went without rest. Slowly man and bird entered a state of delirium and intoxication, of attraction and repulsion that looks very much like love. White kept a daybook describing his volatile relationship with Gos — at once a tale of obsession, a comedy of errors, and a hymn to the hawk. It was this that became The Goshawk, one of modern literature's most memorable and surprising encounters with the wilderness — as it exists both within us and without.
Condition grading: Very good. Two small marks to bottom section of front cover. Slightly tanned spine. Binding tight. The photographs form part of the description.
Penguin Main Series 1931. 1st Edition, published 1963.
T.H. White, the author of The Once and Future King, was a young writer who found himself rifling through old handbooks of falconry. White wrote to Germany to acquire a young goshawk. Gos, as White named the bird, was ferocious and Gos was free, and White had no idea how to break him in beyond the ancient (and, though he did not know it, long superseded) practice of depriving him of sleep, which meant that he, White, also went without rest. Slowly man and bird entered a state of delirium and intoxication, of attraction and repulsion that looks very much like love. White kept a daybook describing his volatile relationship with Gos — at once a tale of obsession, a comedy of errors, and a hymn to the hawk. It was this that became The Goshawk, one of modern literature's most memorable and surprising encounters with the wilderness — as it exists both within us and without.
Condition grading: Very good. Two small marks to bottom section of front cover. Slightly tanned spine. Binding tight. The photographs form part of the description.
