SEEING THE SUNNY SOUTH

Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1921. 320 pages, plus color frontispiece and numerous plates, reproducing 115 photographs. Original pictorial cloth stamped in green, white, and blue; top edge gilt. 23 x 15 cm. Spine a little sunned and soiled; a tiny bit of flaking to cover illustration; neat, early gift inscription on front free endpaper; light foxing to margins of plates and facing pages; still a very good copy. FIRST EDITION. The author visited Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia. In his preface, he touts the advantages of traveling by automobile. John Thomson Faris (1871-1949) was a publisher and Presbyterian minister who wrote several other travelogues. "This is a handbook for the traveling public written by a professional. Like most modern purveyors of the tourist trade, Faris traveled by auto, stayed but little in one place, and indulged in no social commentaries that could offend either natives or prospective tourists. It is not that travel accounts have degenerated at the hands of the makers of guidebooks; they have changed their purposes." --Clark, “Travels in the New South” II, 66.�