Grief is the Thing with Feathers

8vo., grey boards, lettered in black to spine with publisher’s device to foot; dark blue endpapers; together in the black and blue printed dustwrapper (unclipped, £10 to front flap); designed by Faber with an illustration, fittingly, by Eleanor Crow; pp. [x], 3-114, [vi]; a fine, and apparently unread copy in the like dustwrapper. 

First edition, with full number line 1-10. This copy neatly signed by the author to the title page. 

A heartwrenching, and deeply relatable work, Grief was the former Bookshop manager and editor Porter’s first book. Porter’s background in radical performance art, psychoanalysis, and feminism strongly influenced his writing, with thinly-veiled references to Ted Hughes’ ‘Crow’, and the title being an adaptation of Emily Dickinson’s ‘Hope is the thing with feathers’. The present work draws on the author’s own experiences, and follows the lives of a father and his two sons as they battle and explore grief in the wake of the sudden death of their mother. 

In 2019, the book was adapted into a play starring  Enda Walsh and Cillian Murphy, and in 2025 it was adapted again for film starring Benedict Cumberbatch.

“Again. I beg everything again.”  

SKU: 1800186