THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN. C. VAN DYKE : A Personal Narrative of American Life 1861-1931

Salt Lake City, UT: Univ of Utah, 1993. First Edition, First Thus . Hardcover. New/New. BRAND NEW & Collectible. Dust jacket under mylar. Frontispiece: Photo portrait of author taken in 1898. Autobiography of New Jersey-born art connoisseur, desert traveller, and prolific writer John Charles Van Dyke (1856 - 1932). Particularly noted for The Desert (1906) which introduced America at large to the Native American Indians and the flora and fauna of the Southwest; the very public success of work tended to obscure the reality of Van Dyke. This unique autobiography, written in longhand on some 22 note books, was discovered after his death. In a prefatory note dated 1930 he protests against many an "abominably" written histories, and wrote: "... At least I known my own story, and in telling that I hope to present a truthful picture of the decades through which I have lived. It is in measure social history (if the reader will so regard it), and the autobiography of it is merely the form in which it is cast". John C. Van Dyke was friend to Mark Twain, John Muir, Andrew Carnegie, and James McNeill Whistler to name a few; this autobiography is indeed a social history of American at the turn of a century.