L. W. Currey, Inc.

ELLIOTT, WALLACE W. (editor). A guide to the grand and sublime scenery of the Sierra Nevada with an introduction by James B. Snyder. Emeryville, CA: Havilah Press. Berkeley, CA: The Bancroft Library, [2006]. 27.5x18.8 cm, pp. [i-iv] v [vi] vii-xxiii [xxiv] [1-4] [1] 2-60 [61-62] [63-64: blank] 65-80 [81-82: blank] [83: acknowledgments and colophon] [84-86: blank], illustrations, folded map, pictorial boards with cloth shelf back, tan endpapers. New edition. A facsimile of the Bancroft Library's copy of the 1883 edition of A guide to the grand and sublime scenery of the Sierra Nevada in the region about Mount Whitney ... This guide to the Kings Canyon and Sequoia High Sierra was based on explorations by Frank Dusy and Gustavus A. Eisen, James William Albert Wright, Frederick Henry Wales, and William B. Wallace. It was compiled by Elliott & Co., based largely on information supplied by Wright and Dusy. The copy in the Tulare County Free Library formerly owned by Wales has his penciled annotations including one on the title page reading: "Written by J. W. A. Wright then of Hanford, Tulare Co." Most of the material in the Guide first appeared with some textual variations in History of Fresno County, California ... (1881). On page 231 of the History the publishers announced "... It is our intention to issue this article on scenery, in a small volume, or guide book to which will be added a number of engravings and lithographs ..." The important additions to the Guide are the fifteen (later eighteen) lithograph views and additional material on the Whitney region obtained during a trip to Mount Whitney by Wallace, Wales, and Wright in 1881. Wright's account of the trip appeared as a series of letters in the San Francisco Daily Evening Post published on September 3 and 17, and on November 3, 1881. Wallace also wrote an account of the 1881 trip which was published in the Mount Whitney Club Journal, May 1902. For an account of the 1881 activities on Mount Whitney in which Wallace, Wales and Wright participated, see Samuel Pierpont Langley, Researches on Solar Heat and its Absorption by the Earth's Atmosphere. A Report on the Mount Whitney Expedition (1884) and Francis P. Farquhar, "The Story of Mount Whitney: Part II," Sierra Club Bulletin, 20 (February 1935), 89-93. A summary of their mountain trip is provided by Farquhar, "The Story of Mount Whitney: Part IV," Sierra Club Bulletin, 32 (May 1947), 78-81. Sheets of the 1883 edition were bound up in 1886 with new wrappers and several new illustrations. Currey and Kruska 107. Farquhar (1948), title 16. Provenance: Inscribed by the publisher to Michael Dawson "for your help and encouragement" on the colophon page. A fine copy without dust jacket as issued. Publisher's prospectus laid in. (#168346).