Wild Geese Overhead
First Edition:
WILD GEESE | OVERHEAD | by | NEIL M. GUNN | [space] | FABER AND FABER | 24 Russell Square | London
Collation:
[A] (8), B - I (8), No J, K - U (8), No V & W, X (8), Y (4), 172 leaves.
pp. [1] - [2], blank; p. [3] WILD GEESE OVERHEAD; p. [4] By the same author; p. [5] Title page; p. [6] [ital] Publisher's and Printer's notices: First published in October MCMXXXIX; p. [7] For | TOSHON WALSH; p. [8] blank; pp. 9 - 341 Text; pp. [342] - [344] blank.
5" x 7 9/16". Bound in red cloth, spine stamped in gold: WILD GEESE | OVERHEAD | [ornament] | Neil M. | Gunn | [space] | FABER AND | FABER
Other Editions:
Chambers | Edinburgh | 1991 (With a foreword by Dairmid Gunn)
An extract entitled "Streets" comprising part of p. 81, pp. 82 - 107 and part of p. 108 appeared in: Storm and Precipice | Faber and Faber | London | 1st. October 1942 | pp. 80 - 101.
The same episode forms the basis of the short story "Whisky".
Whittles | Dunbeath | 2002
Notes:
In his "A Brief Memoir" (Neil M. Gunn: The Man and the Writer | A.Scott and D.Gifford, eds. | William Blackwood | Edinburgh |1973) Professor F.R.Hart states that this episode was based on a visit Gunn paid to an Edinburgh slum with a medical student, with whom he shared digs, to attend a birth. There was also a similar visit with John MacNair Reid later in Glasgow.
The first of Gunn's books to deal with city life, "Wild Geese Overhead" contains many brilliant descriptions of the slum quarter of Glasgow. At the same time a sensitive love story is told.