Our Southern Highlanders by KEPHART, Horace - 1913

New York: Outing Publishing Company, 1913. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good/good. Octavo, 395pp., illustrated. A very good copy in the publisher's maroon cloth. Notable rubbing along the bottom edges, and some offsetting to the endpapers, but an internally clean, sound example. In the extremely scarce dust jacket, the only we've been able to trace in commerce, which has a long, not-quite-complete tear along the front flap joint, a large chip at the crown joint, and some spotting to the spine panel, but still complete and miraculously present. This copy also SIGNED and INSCRIBED by Kephart on the front free endpaper in the year after publication: "For Mr. C. E. Wood, with best wishes of the writer. Horace Kephart, Bryson CIty, N. C. 1914." Though born in Pennsylvania, from a northeastern family, and raised in the midwest, Kephart is deeply associated with the Great Smoky Mountains. "Our Southern Highlanders" is his best-known work, and it gives a richly detailed portrait of life among remote mountain communities in the hills surrounding Bryson City. The book's publishing rights were purchased by Macmillan in 1921, and the book was subsequently reprinted a number of times. But the first edition is quite uncommon in the trade, and we have never seen a copy in dust jacket. Signed copies are also rare, as Kephart died in 1931 in a car accident. A rare chance to own a jacketed copy of this classic of southern Americana.