The Seagull on the Step

The Seagull on the Step by Kay Boyle. 1955 Knopf, first edition, 247 pages. Boyle was an antiwar activist and prolific short-story writer, who wrote alongside the modernists and expats of her time. She won the Guggenheim and two O'Henry awards, and was widely published in the New Yorker, although was fired from her staff position and blacklisted for a time during the red scare. As for her writing, in the New York Times obituary: "The writer Stephen Vincent Benet once described Miss Boyle's style as being 'as bright as an icicle and light as the bones of a bird.' And the critic Louis Kronenberger once contended that the fineness of her insights was 'such as no other writer of our time, in English at least, can match.'" Seagull on the Step was her twelfth novel.

This copy is inscribed by the author to the owner, along with correspondence from Kay Boyle and newspaper clippings.

Condition: Jacket in fair condition, back flap detached, lower part of spine missing, chips and tears. Book in good condition, tanning on endpapers where the newspaper clippings were.

"The faces turned toward the girl again, even the soldiers turning to look at her for answer, as if the mere fact of being an American invested her with a knowledge of what was to come."