The Illustrated West with the Night
New York: Welcome Enterprises, Inc. and Distributed in the United States by Stewart, Tabori & Chang, Inc., 1994. First Printing [stated]. Hardcover. 288 pages. Profusely illustrated (black and white). Beryl Markham (née Clutterbuck, 26 October 1902 – 3 August 1986) was a British-born Kenyan aviator (one of the first bush pilots), adventurer, racehorse trainer and author. In September 1936 Beryl Markham became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west, taking off in England and crash-landing in Nova Scotia 29 hours and 25 minutes later. She wrote about her adventures in West with the Night. Markham's memoir lingered in obscurity until 1982, when California restaurateur George Gutekunst read a collection of Ernest Hemingway's letters, including one in which Hemingway lavishly praised Markham's writing (if not Markham herself): "Did you read Beryl Markham's book, West with the Night? ...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 nailing them together and sometimes making an okay pig pen. But this girl, who is to my knowledge very unpleasant and we might even say a high-grade bitch, can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers ... it really is a bloody wonderful book." Gutekunst helped persuade North Point Press, to re-issue the book in 1983. The re-release launched a remarkable final chapter in the life of Markham, who was lauded for her three final years as a great author as well as flyer. More