ROSE TREMAIN (b.1943)
Sacred Country. London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1992.
Signed and copiously annotated first edition of Rose Tremain’s seventh book, published in 1992, which explores the issues of sexual identity and gender dysphoria. The novel tells the story of Mary Ward, born in the wrong body in a sleepy Suffolk village in 1952, and her journey to become Martin. Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Prix Femina étranger and shortlisted for the Booker Prize when it was first published, the book has since been lauded by activists such as Peter Tatchell, who praised its ‘groundbreaking illumination of transgender life’. Annotated with over 1,000 words in black pen and pencil across 82 pages, the author has also enclosed supplementary material including a two-page typed statement signed, ‘A remembrance of how it happened’, putting the book in context; an annotated pamphlet from the Gender Dysphoria Trust; as well as three A4 pages of her research notes in autograph manuscript, dated 1988, on the musical history of Nashville. In Sacred Country, Mary’s brother Walter decides to leave for the Southern city to pursue a career as a country and western singer, noting, on behalf of many of the novel’s cast, ‘we’re all something else inside’.

Octavo. Original maroon cloth, spine lettered in gilt, pictorial dust jacket.

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