(#166079) Yosemite: its wonders and its beauties. With information adapted to the wants of tourists about to visit the Valley. By John S. Hittell. Illustrated with twenty photographic views taken by "Helios," and a map of the valley. JOHN SHERTZER HITTELL.

Yosemite: its wonders and its beauties. With information adapted to the wants of tourists about to visit the Valley. By John S. Hittell. Illustrated with twenty photographic views taken by "Helios," and a map of the valley. San Francisco: H. H. Bancroft & Company, 609 Montgomery St., and 600-617 Merchant St., New York: 113 William Street, 1868. 18.5x11 cm [i-iii] iv [v] vi [vii-viii] [9], 10-59 [60: blank, [61-63: ads] [64: blank], flyleaves at front and rear, 20 plates with mounted photographic prints, 1 inserted double-page map. original bevel edged green cloth, front and rear panels ruled in blind, front panel titled in gold, brown coated endpapers. First edition. The first tourist guide to Yosemite Valley. The guide offers little original material -- it makes liberal use of descriptions of the Yosemite region by J. D. Whitney and early tourist accounts by Samuel Bowles, Horace Greeley, Thomas Starr King, and others -- but is noteworthy for its illustrations, which are photographic prints (greatly reduced) of images made by Eadweard J. Muybridge. Muybridge is best known today for his studies of animal locomotion, but his earlier work included an impressive series of views of Yosemite Valley and the big trees, including photographs which brought him international recognition and the Vienna Medal in 1874. Muybridge made his first trip to photograph Yosemite Valley in the spring and summer of 1867. Some of the pictures were taken on commission for Hittell who was putting together his guidebook and wanted to illustrate it with photographs "because no engravings could do justice to the scenes or convey perfect confidence in the accuracy of the drawing of such elevations." His work in the Sierra Nevada is documented by Mary V. Jessup Hood and Robert Bartlett Haas in their painstaking study "Eadweard Muybridge's Yosemite Valley Photographs, 1867-1872," California Historical Society Quarterly, 42 (March 1963), 5-26. The double-page map, "Yosemite Valley" (17.5 x 20.5 cm), lithographed by Britton & Rey, is one of the earliest large scale maps of the Valley. See Farquhar (1948), title 8. Currey and Kruska 146. Farquhar 8. Sabin 32274. Eberstadt (1949) 124: 24. Streeter (1968) V: 2917. Cloth a bit rubbed at edges, a fine copy. Provenance: "Mr. Wagner /Stockton / 1868" on front flyleaf. (#166079).

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