GRAHAM SWIFT (b.1949)
Waterland. London: Heinemann, 1983.
First edition, signed on title and illustrated with sketches of swifts and an eel, annotated with 199 words on five pages, and with six related insertions and an autograph postcard signed, 1 July 2021. Swift's third novel, Waterland is a story of landscape, history and family set in the Fen country and a reflection on human history and natural history, interweaving murder and love, ale and eels. It won the Guardian Fiction Prize and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and is considered a classic of post-war British fiction; it was adapted into a film in 1992, directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal. Swift's annotations relate to an 'absurd mistake' in the chapter headings ('Jour de Gras' for 'Jour de Gloire'), the possible germination of the novel in 'the haunting sound and atmosphere of the words that start the third paragraph' of Dickens's Great Expectations and a clarification that the families in the novel are 'entirely fictional' and that he had no personal connection with the Fens: 'But they must have excited my imagination'. The insertions, all signed (with initials), include print-outs of two related articles, 'Guildhall Farce' (about his experiences in the run-up to the 1983 Booker Prize presentation), and 'Filming the Fens', about the filming of Waterland, each introduced with an autograph note signed; scans of the autograph drafts for the openings of chapters 1 and 3; and scans of a photograph showing Swift with Stephen Gyllenhaal and Jeremy Irons during the filming of Waterland and a beer bottle label used in the film.

Octavo. Original black cloth, gilt lettering to spine, pictorial dust jacket.

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