California in 1851 The Letters of Dame Shirley, 2 Volumes by Clappe, Louise Amelia Knapp Smith (Dame Shirley) - 1933

San Francisco, CA: Grabhorn Press, 1933.. 8vo. Blue Cloth on Light Blue Boards, 142 pp., Very Good, slight slanting. Tan printed paper label affixed to head of spine. Illustrated.

San Francisco: Grabhorn Press, 1933. Hardcover. Near fine. Introduction and notes by Carl I. Wheat. Number 5 Rare Americana Series. One of 500 copies. Cloth spines and printed paper boards with a paper spine labels. Covers faintly sunned. Magee 178 and 179.

San Francisco: Grabhorn Press. Very Good+ in Very Good dust jacket. 1933. Hardcover. Blue cloth spine over blue-grey boards, spine labels. Two volume set. Covers sunned, spine ends rubbed, block edge lightly foxed, endpages toned. Sound and square. The DJs in mylar are chipped/edgeworn. Numbers 5 and 6 of the Rare Americana Series. ; 8vo 8" - 9" tall .

1933. [CLAPPE, Louise Amelia Knapp Smith]. California in 1851 (and 1852) The Letters of Dame Shirley. Introduction and Notes by Carl I. Wheat. San Francisco: Grabhorn Press, 1933. Two vols. xviii, 142 (5); xviii, 143, (6)pp. A very good set in orig. cloth-backed boards with printed paper labels. Howes C-427. Limited to 500 copies. "First appearing serially in the Pioneer Magazine under the pseudonym of `Dame Shirley' in 1854-55, these letters present a vivid and unexcelled picture of everyday life in the mines."--Howes.

Tan covers with brown spine with paper label. Fading on spine where DJ pieces missing. Tasteful book plate inside front cover and inscription on FFE of previous owner Lura Wallace. This is the thin buff California bond-paper edition and is numbered 111 and is initialed J. C. R. the publisher's initials. The plates are not colored. The DJ is missing pieces at top and bottom of spine and is separated at the fold. Paper label on DJ is missing the edges but the title is complete.

San Francisco: Thomas C. Russell, 1922. First Edition. Hardcover. Near fine. The first edition in book form. Out of an edition of 450 copies, this is one of the 200 printed on California bond-paper and signed by the publisher, with eight hand-colored line block relief prints from drawings based on old prints of life in the California Gold Fields. First published serially in "The Pioneer" magazine in 1854-55, these celebrated letters offer an insightful and vivid account of everyday life in a California mining town. Having sailed around Cape Horn to San Francisco, Clappe (1819-1906) joined her husband at Rich Bar in September 1851, and wrote a series of 23 letters between 1851 and 1852 to her sister back home in Massachusetts. Although not originally intended for publication, the letters are a carefully composed commentary upon a masculine society in which "Dame Shirley" wittily and sometimes sentimentally displays her realistic observations of a coarse and barbarous way of life. Clappe later worked… Read More