The Hi-Lead

Dame Shirley Letters, 1854-55

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.

$10,000

Hemingway's Old Man First Edition

Hemingway, Ernest

The Old Man and the Sea

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1952.

First edition, with Scribner's "A" and seal beneath the copyright notice, in a dust jacket with Hemingway's portrait printed in olive ink, but no mention of the Nobel Prize.

Some examples of the dust jacket are printed in blue ink; later jackets include a mention of Hemingway's Nobel, awarded in 1954.While this novel is sometimes slighted by critics as one of Hemingway's lesser novels, it is probably his most popular book and only a cynic wouldn't be moved by this masterful big-fish tale. Faulkner, reviewing the book in "Shenandoah," greatly admired the book, writing "Time may show it to be the best single piece of any of us. I mean his and my contemporaries."

Discoloration to the board edges, in an attractive dust jacket with a short closed tear along the top edge and a touch of wear at the base of the spine (not price-clipped).

SOLD

Huck Finn First

Twain, Mark [pseudonym of Samuel Clemens].

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer's Comrade)

New York: Charles L. Webster and Company, 1885. First printing, earliest cloth issue. A lovely first edition of what is arguably one of the greatest American novels of the 19th century. Huckleberry Finn has a rather complicated printing history and is found in a variety of states.

Three issue points are now considered as definitively identifying the first printing of the first edition, and this copy includes all three: on page [9], the second subheading of Chapter VI reads "Huck decided," which was later changed to "Huck decides"; on page 13, the illustration "Him and another man" is erroneously listed as being on page 88 (it is actually in page 87), and page 57 reads "with the was" instead of "with the saw." 

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India in the 17th Century

Bocarro, Antonio.

Decada 13 da historia da India.

Lisboa [Lisbon]: Typographia da Academia Real das Sciencias, 1876.

First edition. Tall quartos. Part 1: xxii, 374 [blank leaf]. Part 2: viii, 377–805. In Portuguese. Antonio Bocarro, the chief archivist on the Portuguese colony of Goa, in India, wrote this history of the "thirteenth decade" (1612-1617) of the Portuguese presence in the far east but it remained a little known manuscript until this publication by the Academia Real. A useful source on early seventeenth-century Africa, India, Burma, and Macao.

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The Best 19th Century Hitopadesa in English

Johnson, Francis (translator).

Hitopadesa, the Sanskrit Text of the First Book, or Mitra-Labha, with a Grammatical Analysis, Alphabetically Arranged.

London: James Madden and Co., 1840. First edition. iii, 153 pages, plus a three-page scheme of poetic meters, and one page of ads. Small folio.

Johnson, a professor at the East-India College, edited this first part of the Hitopadesa (a collection of Sanskrit fables) as an introductory text for students learning the language. It includes the Sanskrit text, an English transliteration, an English translation, and a detailed dictionary of all the words used in the text.

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A Voyage to India in 1883

Loureiro, Adolpho.

No oriente de Napoles a China (Diario de viagem).

Lisboa [Lisbon]: Imprensa Nacional, 1896–97.

First edition. 369, 419 pages. Two volumes bound as one. An account (in Portuguese) of a voyage from Naples to China, via India in 1883 and 1884. Series: Quarto centenario do descobrimento da India, contribuiões da Sociedada de Geographia de Lisboa. Uncommon. Bound as volume 4 of the Quarto centenario series in blue cloth with gilt spine titles. A very good copy, with old library blindstamps on the title-pages, one partially obscured with Wite-Out (no other library markings).

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Autograph Quotation by Nehru

Nehru, Jawaharlal.

Autograph Quotation Signed.

1945. Autograph quotation signed by the first prime minister of India, before Independence. The quote is from Nehru's autobiography, Toward Freedom:

"There are no supermen or philosopher-kings; there are only frail human beings who cannot help thinking that their own personal good or the advancement of their own ideas is identical to the public good."

Signed in full and dated Nov 27, 1945, prior to his taking office as the first elected leader of independent India. Fine, but for an old crease and three small tack holes (not affecting text). There is an ink spot on the verso (back), which is just visible from the front.

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Novel of Christians in India (1885)

[Mullens, Hannah Catherine]

Prasanna and Kamini: The History of a Young Hindu.

London: Religious Tract Society, (n.d. but ca. 1885). First edition of this version (see below). Small 8vo. 191 pages, plus 16 pages of ads.

Illustrated with four engraved plates, including a frontispiece of a baptism taking place in the Ganges River.

Mullens was a missionary based in Calcutta during the middle of the nineteenth century (she died in 1861), and is perhaps most notable for writing the first novel ever published in Bengali (Phulmani and Karuna, 1852). This is Mullens' second novel extolling the virtues of Christian women in India, originally published as Faith and Victory: A Story of the Progress of Christianity in Bengal (London, 1865) and as Life By the Ganges (Philadelphia, 1867). The novel was then loosely adapted for publication in Bengali, with many changes apparently to make it more palatable for the local population. Prasanna and Kamini is Faith and Victory re-translated from Bengali back into English, with further amendments for an English-speaking audience. (I think there's a thesis in textual studies in there somewhere.)

A scarce work, with just one copy in OCLC (none in the US) and just three in COPAC. (Reference: Tilottoma Misra, "Early Asamiya Novels" in Early Novels in India by Meenakshi Mukherjee). A lovely copy in the publisher's binding decorated with a spray of flowers printed in colors and the title in gilt. Fine, but for a gift inscription dated 1885 (which helps confirm the publication date).

SOLD

Edward Curtis' The North American Indian

Curtis, Edward S.

The North American Indian, Volume 13: The Hupa. The Yurok. The Karok. The Wiyot, Tolowa and Tututni. The Shasta. The Achomawi. The Klamath.

(N.-pl.): (the author), 1924. First edition.

Folio, bound in half morocco gilt with raised bands and heavy buckram cloth sides.

One of 500 numbered copies (although Curtis never completed the edition. He sold some 220 copies and gave about 50 copies to friends and supporters). The volume was printed by letterpress on Japan vellum paper. Illustrated with 75 sepia-tone photogravures (photo-engravings) from Curtis’s original photographs.

The Library of Congress describes The North American Indian by Edward S. Curtis as “one of the most significant and controversial representations of traditional American Indian culture ever produced. Issued in a limited edition from 1907 to 1930, the publication continues to exert a major influence on the image of Indians in popular culture. Curtis said he wanted to document ‘the old time Indian, his dress, his ceremonies, his life and manners.’ In over 2000 photogravure plates and narrative, Curtis portrayed the traditional customs and lifeways of eighty Indian tribes.”

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Captain John

Ericson, A. W.

Scene at Hoopa Valley, Humboldt Co. California. [Captain John, Hupa leader of Madilding Rancheria]

Arcata, California: A. W. Ericson, (1890s, printed circa 1920s?).

A 9 by 7 inch photograph on an 11 by 14 inch mount titled at the bottom in a san-serif typeface (Palmquist logo style I). Ericson was the leading (and best) commercial photographer in Humboldt County from about 1880 to the 1930s. He traveled to the Hoopa reservation to take photographs on many occasions. In this scene, "Captain John," one of the best-known Hupa leaders, stands before a traditional cedar plank and stone dwelling in the Med'dilding (or Madilding) village, on the Trinity River. He is wearing the regalia for the brush dance—a fur loincloth, several strands of shell necklaces, and a hat with dangling feathers. He holds a short, obsidian-tipped spear and a bundle of furs.

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"The dark history of our connection with the aborigines"

"Who brought these Indians to their present condition? ... Who enervated their bodies and degraded their minds by the contamination of the vices of the white man?"

On Repealing the Act of 1819, for the Civilization of the Indians, &c.

Washington DC: (n.p.), 1842

A report by James Cooper, Chairman of the Committee of Indian Affairs in the House of Representatives, opposing the proposed bill to repeal the Civilization Fund. The fund was established to teach trades to members of peaceful tribes. Much of the funding went to Christian missionary groups, which attempted to convert Native Americans while educating them. The act proved a controversial expenditure of taxpayer money until it was finally repealed in 1873. This report argues that for each dollar of federal investment has been matched by private groups and provides a table indicating the trades taught to members of various tribes (blacksmithing being the most common). Appended to the report is an impassioned plea by the Secretary of War, J. C. Spenser, who notes that the annual appropriation of $10,000 per year for the program paled in comparison to the millions of dollars earned by white Americans on the lands that once belonged to the Indians.

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The Weewish Tree

The Weewish Tree: A Magazine of Indian America for Young People.

San Francisco: American Indian Historical Society, (1971–1977).

A 26-issue run of this periodical aimed at children about Native American culture, published by a Native American organization. Each issue combines short pieces on Native American history, legends, and introductions to the culture of various tribes. The issues present are:

Volume 1, nos. 1, 3–5;
Volume 2, nos. 1, 2, 4–7
Volume 3, nos. 1–7
Volume 4, nos. 1, 2, 4–7
Volume 5, nos. 1–3

[missing 1:2; 1:6, 2:3, and 4:3]

Most issues are very good or better. A few have soiled covers and last seven are ex-library copies with ownership stamps and card pockets.

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Life Among the Karuks

"Kar-ook country was without exterior boundaries nor measurements, recognizing only three cardinal directions: they being Kar-ook, up-river; See-arook, across the river (the other side); and Yu-rook, downriver."

Hotelling, Wesley E.

My Life with the Kar-ooks, Miners and Forestry

(N.-pl. but Willow Creek, California?): (n.p.), 1978. First edition.

The self-published memoirs of a forest ranger who was born and spent most of his life along the Klamath River, in the northeast corner of Humboldt County, in the Trinity Alps. This is the ancestral home of the Karuk ("upriver") tribe. Hotelling's family had lived in the area since the 1850s, when they arrived to search for gold.

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Hupa Dictionary

Golla, Victor (compiler)

Hupa Language Dictionary : Na:tinixwe mixine:whe

Hoopa, California: Hoopa Valley Tribal Council, 1996.

Second edition. 110 pages. Paperback. A revision and update to the first Hupa dictionary, first published in 1983. The Hupa are the largest tribe in California, with a large reservation in northern Humboldt County.

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First (Book) Account of the Chinese Exclusion from Humboldt County

 
"All that portion of Humboldt county which is, so to speak, within the domain of civilization, have been thoroughly, and it is believed permanently, ridded by peaceable means of this objectionable class."

Humboldt County, California. A Pamphlet Descriptive of its Climate, Resources and Advantages: Together with a Carefully Compiled Statement of Its Lumber Output and Exports of Natural Products for the Year Ending August 1, 1887 [cover title]. 

Eureka: Commissioners of Humboldt County, Cal., to the State and Mechanics' Institute Fairs and the Chamber of Commerces of the City of Eureka, 1887. 

First edition. 12-page pamphlet, printed by C. W. Nevin & Co. in San Francisco. 

An early and scarce (OCLC records six copies) promotional pamphlet for Humboldt County, and the first to describe the forced removal of all ethnic Chinese just two years before.

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