Two Years Before The Mast A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea. Illustrated by Hans Alexander Mueller Introduction by William McFee OVERSIZE

New York: The Heritage Press [George Macy Companies], 1947. Hardcover. In exceptionally good condition. Royal octavo, [25cm/10inches], full gilt-embossed pictorial cloth, sans dust jacket, -as published,- w/ slipcase, pp. xx, 346. Illustrated with halftone chiaroscuro drawings, &tc.. Please feel free to ask for particulars and/or additional photographs. ... Hans Alexander Mueller was the author of Woodcuts & Wood Engravings: How I Make Them, (1939). Though now largely forgotten as a technique, chiaroscuro, of which Mueller was an undisputed master was widely used in illustrations throughout the Nineteenth Century, until replaced by offset and color lithography printing technology. William McFee immigrated to the United States in 1911 and wrote books, afterwards going to sea in ships of the United Fruit Company. During World War I he served in the Royal Navy as engineer in various transport ships. After the war, McFee returned to the United States to live in Roxbury, Connecticut. He was with the United Fruit Company, as chief engineer until 1924 when he turned definitively to writing. In addition to books, he also wrote reviews for The New York Sun and The New York Times. One of his reviews was for Save Me the Waltz by Zelda Fitzgerald, in which he said, "In this book, with all its crudity of conception, its ruthless purloinings of technical tricks and its pathetic striving after philosophic profundity, there is the promise of a new and vigorous personality in fiction." richard Henry Dana is, of course, one of the patron saints of Southern California