The Dead Seagull

Book excerpt: An uncompromising tale of obsession and the darker side of love First published in 1945, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart is considered a classic of autobiographical fiction. Set in America, it tells of the narrator’s obsessive affair with a married man and is based on Smart’s real life relationship with the English poet, George Barker, with whom she had four children. It has remained in print for over seventy years. Five years later, Barker published his own account of their affair in the novel The Dead Seagull. In his version, the narrator lives with his pregnant wife, Theresa, in a cottage by the sea somewhere in England. When Theresa invites an old school friend to stay she is oblivious, busy as she is dealing with the impending birth of her child, to the fact that her friend and husband embark upon a passionate affair that will destroy the very life and family she is trying to build. The Dead Seagull is an uncompromising tale of obsession and the darker side of love. It has been out of print for over thirty years and is published here for the first time in ebook, with the support and permission of the Barker family, and an introduction by George Barker’s daughter Raffaella. Praise for The Dead Seagull ‘By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart is undoubtedly a classic and The Dead Seagull is its lost half.’ Cassandra Pybus