BRAXTON'S BAR. A TALE OF PIONEER YEARS IN CALIFORNIA. By R. M. Daggett (of Nevada). New York: G. W. Carleton & Co., Publishers. London: S. Low, Son & Co., MDCCCLXXXII [1882]. 12mo, pp. [i-vi] vii-viii 9-453 [454: blank] [455-456: ads], flyleaves at front and rear, twelve inserted plates, original brown cloth, spine panel stamped in gold, front and rear panels stamped in blind, terra cotta endpapers. First edition. A melodrama based on Daggett's walking trip across the country and his days in the mines set at "Braxton's Bar," a fictional bar near Downieville on the Yuba River. Rollin Mallory Daggett (1831-1909) "walked from Ohio to California (1850) and in San Francisco founded the GOLDEN ERA (1852), the state's first literary weekly. A decade later he moved to Virginia City, Nevada, and there established the TERRITORIAL ENTERPRISE. A later political career made him a Congressman and Minister to Hawaii (1882-1885)" (Hart, Companion to California, p. 122). "... The work demonstrates the vivid imagination and literary abilities of a talented writer and has been judged 'the best novel to be produced' by a California argonaut (Francis P. Weisenburger, Idol of the West [Syracuse University Press, 1965], pp. 126-127). "Though marred by cheap fictional situations, it was the best novel to be produced by a forty-niner" (Walker, San Francisco's Literary Frontier, pp. 282-283). Wright (III) 1362. Baird and Greenwood 593. Cowan (1933), p. 154. Cloth rubbed at edges, scattered light foxing, a very good copy with bright gold spine stamping. (#165518).
Price: $350.00
No statement of printing.