THE ILLUSTRATED – WEST WITH THE NIGHT

‘I learned to watch, to put my trust in other hands than mine. I learned to wander. I learned what every dreaming child needs to know that no horizon is so far that you cannot get above it or beyond it. These I learned at once. But most things come harder.’-Beryl Markham

West with the Night is an international bestseller that has sold more than one million copies since it was first published, to great acclaim, in the early 1940s. Now, for the first time, Stewart, Tabori & Chang is publishing a lavishly designed and handsomely illustrated edition of this remarkable autobiography. 

Set against a backdrop of early twentieth-century Africa, an Africa that no longer exists, Beryl Markham, a gifted and lyrical storyteller, eloquently describes her extraordinary life as a pioneer aviator, a breeder of race horses, and a child growing up in a sparsely populated area of British East Africa. Illustrating this awe-inspiring life story expands our appreciation of the marvellous adventure that was her life. 

Certain to become a collector’s item, the book features never-before-published memorabilia from the Beryl Markham estate in London, shots of African landscapes, aircraft photographs from London’s Royal Aeronautical Society, wildlife photographs by world-renowned photographers Peter Beard and Frans Lanting, news photographs from the 1930s, and portraits of Denys Finch – Hatton, Bror Blixen, Tom Campbell and the African tribes so vividly described in the book. Here is the perfect gift for anyone interested in the courage of women, the wonder of Africa, the thrill of flying, the habits of wild animals, or the boundless horizon of the human spirit. 

Born in England in 1902, Beryl Markham was taken by her father to East Africa in 1906, ‘because’, he said, ‘it is new and you can feel the future under your feet’. She spent her childhood playing with native Murano children and watching her father transform a stretch of wilderness into a working farm. After apprenticing as a trainer and breeder of race horses, she became the first woman to earn an aviator’s license in Africa. 

From 1931 to 1936, Markham carried mail, passengers, and supplies to the remote corners of the Sudan, Tanganyika, Kenya, and Rhodesia. In September 1936 she became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west – taking off in England and crash-landing in Nova Scotia twenty-one hours and twenty-five minutes later. 

After staying in America for many years, Beryl Markham returned to Kenya in 1948 where she lived until her death in 1986, at the age of 84.

REVIEWS OF WEST WITH THE NIGHT:

From a letter to 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 marvellously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself 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 [she] can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves writers. The only parts of it that I know about personally, on account of having been there at the time and heard other people’s stories, are absolutely true. I wish you would get it and read it because it is really a bloody wonderful book. —Ernest Hemingway

‘West with the Night is a masterly example of the art of autobiographies.’ – Washington Post Book World 

‘With the skill of someone who has filled long nights with stories, Markham recounts her adventures discoveries, rescues, and narrow escapes, the glint of an aeroplane deserted in the desert, the look of a lion much more than a pilot’s memoir, West with the about to pounce Night is a wise, funny and inspiring exploration of a life well lived.’ —The Nation

‘West with the Night will prove an enduring achievement. Sooner or later, someone, male or female, would have crossed the Atlantic from England. But no one else has written a book like this one. —The Village Voice

Source: Publisher's summary printed on cover