Description
Harvill Press, London, Published date: 1997. Softcover, printed paper wrappers; 39 pp; 20 cm. First paperback edition. Illustrated with black and white wood engravings by Harry Brockway.
Rare, out-of-print & unusual books · Since 1997
119
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Catalog notes
Condition & notes
In very good condition. Original cream printed paper covers; light shelf wear and mild surface handling; spine sound and uncreased. Interior pages clean and unmarked. [from back cover] "A small mound of white feathers lies on a tussock of grass made grey by a Highland winter. It is all the monument there will ever be to the life of a swan" With these words, and those that follow, Jim Crumley has ensured that there will be a more enduring witness to the life of this swan, and of all swans, than that pyre of white feathers. Crumley watches, year in year out, as a pair of mute swans struggles, against the odds, to raise young on a wild patch of loch. But the pen starts to lose her eggs to predators; and the cob begins to disappear for longer and longer periods. Until comes the day when a third swan, stronger and younger than the first pen, appears at the other end of the loch. This journal of a swan-watcher, as he calls himself, is an elegy to these noble creatures; and most poignantly it is a memorial to one swan, whose silent drama he has recorded.