The Finest First-hand Account of the Gold Rush
[Clappe, Louise Amelia Knapp Smith] Ewer, F. C. The Dame Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 [in] The Pioneer; or, California Monthly Magazine
San Francisco: W. H. Brooks & Company, 1854-55. First edition. Four volumes containing 24 issues of The Pioneer (all published), bound in four volumes; half polished calf and marbled paper-covered boards. Volume I, Jan. to June, 1854: iv, 384 pages, [terminal blank]; Volume II, July to Dec., 1854: iv, 384 pages; Volume III, Jan. to June, 1855, iv, 384 pages; Volume IV (misnumbered VI), July to Dec., 1855, mispaginated as follows, [i–iii], v, [5], 6-68, [65], 66-384. Title leaf and table of contents bound in at the front of each volume.
One of the scarcer Zamorano 80 titles and, to quote the former California State Librarian and historian Kevin Starr, “arguably the finest first-hand account of the gold rush.”
“A vivid and unexcelled picture of every-day life in the mines.” Howes US-Iana, C427. “Being a cultured woman’s contemporary report of experiences in the gold rush, they are unique.”—Zamorano 80.
“Mrs. Clappe’s vivid, picturesque, and highly appealing sketches of of life in the mining camps of Rich Bar and Indian Bar on the Feather River in 1851 and 1852 have influenced writers from Bret Harte to Wallace Stegner and are regarded as among the most important authentic accounts of the Gold Rush.”—John Howell Books Catalog 50.
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In the introduction to the first issue of The Pioneer, the editor Ferdinand Ewer explained the goal of the publication as "an attempt to establish in California a periodical of a purely literary character." In the attempt to put California literature on par with the East, The Pioneer was hardly a success, despite contributions from Frank Delano, Frank Soulé, and John Phoenix (Capt. George Derby). Joseph Gaer (Bibliography of California Literature) was not overly impressed, referring to "what was intended as poetry" and how the journal "led the romantic tradition a step nearer to a varnished realism."
It is rather ironic, then, that The Pioneer achieved immortality for non-fiction, being the first appearance of what came to be known as The Shirley Letters, widely admired as the best account of gold rush life in the California mines.
The author of the 23 letters (serialized in all but one issue of The Pioneer), called herself by the pseudonym Dame Shirley. She was in actual fact Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clapp [see note below about the spelling of her name], an emigrant from Massachusetts and the wife of Dr. Fayette Clapp. Mrs. Clapp was an amateur poet, and her husband hoped to find financial success treating ailing miners. They set up camp on the Feather River, north of Marysville, California, where Louise wrote long descriptions of life on the frontier and sent them to her sister back home.
According to Starr, “Her letters offer a unique blend of sympathetic social portraiture and literate satire. (Both [Brett] Harte and Mark Twain seem to have found inspiration in Clappe’s letters for some of their best known stories without acknowledging the source.)” Josiah Royce, in his 1886 history of California (itself a Zamorano 80 title), expressed a similar view: “These ‘Shirley’ letters form the best account of an early mining camp that is known to me. For our real insight into the mining life as it was, they are, of course, infinitely more helpful to us than the perverse romanticism of a thousand such tales as Bret Harte’s…”
Once the Clapps left the mines, Louise became a teacher and her husband left her, and headed further west, to Hawaii. At that point, Louise changed her name, adding an “e” to the end (and since that was her preferred spelling, it is the one we have adopted).
According to Marlene Smith-Baranzini, the editor of the latest edition of the Shirley Letters, Clappe wanted to be acknowledged as a writer “from the first penstroke.” It seems likely that Clappe saved copies of her letters and brought them to San Francisco after the mines petered out along the Feather River. She quickly became friends with The Pioneer’s editor, and contributed two essays, along with her 23 letters. Contrary to her engaging and evocative letters, her essays, one on superstition and the other entitled “Equality of the Sexes,” have the turgid, over-written style common to the time. While Clappe’s Shirley Letters are hailed as a triumph of women’s writing, her essay on equality is a chiding piece attacking suffragists.
Although she used a pseudonym, Clappe’s identity was an open secret and clues were present in The Pioneer. In the index of volume IV, the author of the essay “Superstition” was given as Louisa Clapp, while at the head of the essay itself, the author is identified as Shirley. In 1922, when the first book edition of the Shirley Letters appeared, the editor noted “But few copies of The Pioneer are known to be in existence.” Since then, a number of sets have surfaced, and most have found their way to institutions. Since 1975, only three complete runs, such as this one, have appeared at auction. Most recently the Volkmann set, bound in two volumes, made $10,350 in 2003; another run bound in two volumes sold for $2,500 in 1996, and a complete set with all but two issues in original wrappers sold for $28,000 in 1994.
The bindings show very light wear to the edges and a bit of scuffing to the marbled paper covers. One leaf has a large tear, professionally mended with Japanese tissue. A very nice set of a rare publication. (#E617)
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