COLD FACTS ABOUT CALIFORNIA. Boston: The Star Publishing Company, n.d. [1895]. 22.8x14.8 cm (octavo), pp. [1-2] 3-24, publisher's gray wrappers printed in black, stapled. First edition. Hope, an Eastern businessman, lived in California during the years 1892-1894 and during his stay traveled extensively, visiting "all the prominent localities, many of them many times." Hope's intent is to present reasons why one should not settle in California, and counter the "greatly exaggerated and largely overestimated" accounts of the "Golden State" presented by the boomers, "the witchery of the writings of Bret Harte," and especially "a series of papers" published "a few years ago" by Charles Dudley Warner. Hope states that "all over California, and in particular in the southern part of that State, the writer found persons who might well be called 'Charles Dudley Warner's California Fools'" (a reference to earlier sarcastic newspaper accounts of "Adirondack Murray's Fools," summer tourists visiting the mosquito-haunted wilds of the Adirondack region of northern New York State). Topics include climate, fruit raising, diseases prevalent in California, law, order and morality, and the Chinese Question. "With the compliments of Owen O. Hope" stamped at the top edge of the front cover. Wrappers just a bit dusty, a very good copy. An obscure work not found in the standard Western Americana bibliographies. (#172734).
Price: $350.00
No statement of printing.