Karen Blixen - Isak Dinesen home

The Kenyan aviatrix Beryl Markham (1902-1986) is best known for her celebrated memoir West with the Night, first published in 1942--and an international bestseller upon its republication in 1982. Beryl made aviation history in 1936, when she became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean from East to West.

Karen Blixen was a friend and confidant to Beryl Markham, seventeen years younger. Beryl first stayed at Karen Blixen's home in 1923. When she married Mansfield Markham (the second of her three marriages) in 1927, Karen Blixen lent her house for the honeymoon. In 1928 Beryl, five months pregnant, was invited to dine at Karen Blixen's house with Denys Finch Hatton and the Prince of Wales (later Duke of Windsor). Karen Blixen said that Beryl looked "ravishing."

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Background

• (Second update) Gale Group Women's History
• Photos of Beryl Markham
  
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• Pilots' Literature
• Women in Flight lecture by John H. Lienhard
• Photos and biographical essay page by Salina J. Wilde
• A High Life and a Wild One by Diane Ackerman
  

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West with the Night:
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• Analysis of authorship and text of West with the Night--by Robert Viking O'Brien
• Radio Review by John H. Lienhard
• Quotes
  


Of�Interest


• West with the Night Study Questions
• Two films have been made about Beryl Markham: World without Walls, a documentary produced by George Gutekunst (1986), and a made for television drama with Stephanie Powers, Shadow on the Sun (1988).