The Goshawk

Publisher Marketing: The predecessor to Helen Macdonald s "H Is for Hawk," T. H. White s nature-writing classic, "The Goshawk," asks the age-old question: What is it that binds human beings to other animals? White, author of "The Once and Future King" and "Mistress Masham s Repose," was a young writer who found himself rifling through old handbooks of falconry. A particular sentence the bird reverted to a feral state seized his imagination, and, White later wrote, A longing came to my mind that I should be able to do this myself. The word feral has a kind of magical potency which allied itself to two other words, ferocious and free. Immediately White wrote to Germany to acquire a young goshawk. Gos, as White named the bird, was ferocious and Gos was free, and White had no idea how to break him in beyond the ancient (and, as it happened, long superseded) practice of depriving him of sleep, which meant that he, White, also went without rest. Slowly man and bird entered a state of delirium and intoxication, of attraction and repulsion that looks very much like love. White kept a daybook describing his volatile relationship with Gos at once a tale of obsession, a comedy of errors, and a hymn to the hawk. It was this that became "The Goshawk," one of modern literature s most memorable and surprising encounters with the wilderness as it exists both within us and without." Review Citations: New Yorker (The) 03/09/2015 pg. 90 (EAN 9781590172490, Paperback) Library Journal 02/15/1996 pg. 180 (EAN 9781558214354, Paperback) New York Times 04/21/1996 pg. 44 (EAN 9781558214354, Paperback) Publishers Weekly 01/29/1996 (EAN 9781558214354, Paperback) Contributor Bio:  White, T H T. H. White (1906 1964) is the author of the classic Arthurian fantasy "The Once and Future King", among other works. He was born in Mumbai, India, to English parents and educated at Queen s College, Cambridge. His writings have had a strong influence on both J. K. Rowling and Neil Gaiman.