The Gold Falcon or, The Haggard of Love. Being the adventures of Manfred, airman and poet of the World War, and later, husband and father, in search of freedom and personal sunrise, in the city of New York, and of the consummation of his life.

Bookseller Notes

An excellent copy of this anonymously-published novel of the War's aftermath, a roman--clef wherein Williamson figures as the hero Manfred Fiennes-Carew-Manfred - Sassoon is here as Sherston Savage, T.E. Lawrence as G.B. Everest, Ford Madox Hueffer becomes Mark Cradocks Speuffer 'the friend of Conrad', with Alec Waugh converted to 'Alick Peace', whilst references to Aldous Huxley ('Adolf Stucley'), D.H. Lawrence ('David Torrence'), and T.S. Eliot ('P.S. Etiol') also appear.The TLS called it as 'a baffling, disturbing, always individual and sometimes strangely beautiful book'; John Brophy, for the Liverpool Post and Mercury, was similarly mystified but professed that it had 'strained my temper to its limits' - suggesting, perhaps disingenuously, that 'Williamson ought to take action for libel against someone who has parodied so closely and so faithfully the incoherence and spiritual exhibitionism which have ruined his later books'; J.B. Priestley, meanwhile, took characteristic umbrage at his portrait in the novel (as 'P.D. Bradford'), exacting his revenge in a review that referred to the work as a 'gigantic oozing slab of self-pity, [...]carrying the wet trade mark of Henry Williamson'.This copy carries a slip suggesting that it was from the author's own library; there are no ownership marks that would corroborate its origin in the recent sale of Williamson's library, but it would explain its apparently unread condition.