Written in response to Elizabeth Smart's By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, Barker's The Dead Seagull provides a novelised response to a love affair that lasted 18 years and bore four children. While both titles are autobiographical, The Dead Seagull's terse, cognizant retelling is a sharp repost to Smart's electric anapaestic prose.
Barker, George. The Dead Seagull
Farrar, Straus and Young, Inc., 1950.
First edition, octavo. Publisher's orange cloth boards with title to spine in gilt on black. Publisher's illustrated duck jacket unclipped. Minor bumping to spine ends, with a little sunning to the tops of boards. Dust jacket has several small losses, nicks and tears, with a red ink stain and some foxing on the reverse. Internally clean, light pencil page numbers on the end flyleaf, with corresponding passaged marked throughout the text block. Overall a lovely copy.