A Fine Collection of
Californiana
A Selection of
Distinguished Rare Books, Maps,
Broadsides, Letter Sheets Ephemera
Formed by
DANIEL G. VOLKMANN JR.
AUCTION
Wednesday, February 16, 2005, 3 p.m.
to be conducted at
The Joseph & Mildred Rolph Moore Gallery
at The Society of California Pioneers
300 Fourth Street (at the corner of Folsom Street)
San Francisco, California 94107
by
Dorothy Sloan–Rare Books, Inc.
Dorothy Sloan–Rare Books, Inc.
Box 49670
Austin, Texas 78765-9670
Phone 512-477-8442 Fax 512-477-8602
E-mail: Web:
Catalogue Editors-in-Chief: Jasmine & Jason Star
Photography: frontispiece by George Selland Photography (San Francisco, California);
remainder by Third Eye Photography (Austin, Texas), John Oliver (Austin, Texas), and Peter L. Oliver (Austin, Texas)
Design and typesetting by Bradley Hutchinson at Digital Letterpress, Austin, Texas
Printed by the Studley Press in Dalton, Massachusetts
Catalogue descriptions by Dorothy Sloan (assisted by Dr.W. Michael Mathes,
Anthony Sloan, Jasmine & Jason Star, and Peter L. Oliver)
Occasional historical essays by Dr.W. Michael Mathes (marked with a fleuron)
AUCTION FIFTEEN
Please note: the entire catalogue with additional illustrations is posted at our website:
Webmaster & Designer: Jason Star
EXHIBITION
Sunday, February 13, 2005, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.
Monday, February 14, 2005, 9 a.m.-6:30 p.m.
Tuesday, February 15, 2005, 9 a.m.-7 p.m.
Wednesday, February 16, 2005, 9 a.m.-12 p.m.
Price of printed catalogue: $75.00 plus applicable sales tax
Dorothy Sloan, Texas State Auctioneers License #10210
IMPORTANT NOTICE
Please note that all lots are sold subject to our Conditions of Sale and Limited Warranty,
as set forth at the back of this catalogue. As stated in the Conditions of Sale, all lots are sold on an “as is” basis. Prospective bidders should review the Conditions of Sale and Limited Warranty. All bidders must register.
Seating at the auction will be limited (due to San Francisco city code, space limitations,
and our desire to support a non profit historical society). Only registered bidders may attend the live auction.
Please phone, fax, or e-mail for a seating reservation if you plan to attend the live auction. We will be pleased to execute your live phone bids or confirmed absentee bids without charge and without responsibility for errors and subject to the Conditions of Sale and Limited Warranty as set forth at the back of our catalogue.
1. ACKLEY, Mary E. Crossing the Plains and Early Days in California: Memories of Girlhood Days in California’s Golden Age. San Francisco: Privately printed, 1928. 68 pp., photographic frontispiece, 6 photographic plates (included in pagination). 8vo, original half beige cloth over beige boards, printed grey paper label on upper cover. Light cover wear and corners bumped (a bit of board exposed), a few signatures carelessly opened, otherwise a very good copy of a fragile book.
First edition. Cowan II, p. 2. Eberstadt, Modern Narratives of the Plains & Rockies 1. Flake 12. Howell 50, California 264: “One of the scarcest of the modern books on overland travel.” Howes A33. Mintz, The Trail 3. “Mrs. Ackley was ten when her family emigrated from Missouri to Sacramento in 1852. An observant child with a good memory, she gives an engaging summary of her journey overland and her early experiences in California” (Hanna, Yale Exhibit).
($200-400)
2. ADAMS, Ansel. “Poplars, Autumn, Owens Valley, California.” Gelatin silver photograph. 32.7 x 22.9 cm; 12-7/8 x 9 inches. Signed by Adams in pencil on mount at lower right; titled, dated, and rubber-stamped in ink on verso: [stamped] Photograph by Ansel Adams | [in ink] Poplars, Autumn, Owens Valley | [in ink] California c. 1937 | [stamped] Route 1 Box 181 Carmel, California 93921. Matted, framed, and glazed. Very fine.
($3,000-6,000)
3. ADAMS, Ansel. Sierra Nevada and the John Muir Trail.Berkeley: Archetype Press, 1938. [50 leaves of plates consisting of 50 mounted photogravures on coated stock (printed by the Lakeside Press, Chicago, each plate with a separate caption leaf)]. Folio, original white cloth. Very good copy, signed twice by Ansel Adams (on half title and colophon). Preserved in a cloth box.
First and only edition, limited edition (#125 of 500 copies) of one of the rarest and finest of Adams’s many photography books. Ansel Adams stated: “A word about the photographs themselves: my best work with the camera in the Sierra, they attempt to convey the experiences and the moods derived from a close association with the mountains.... I feel secure in confining the tone-scale of my prints to a vibrant deep register and in adhering to a certain austerity throughout, in accentuating the acuteness of edge and texture, and in stylizing the severity, grandeur, and poignant minutiae of the mountains.”
($3,000-6,000)
4. [ADAMS, Ansel]. ALINDER, James (editor). Ansel Adams 1902-1984. [Carmel: The Friends of Photography, 1984]. 56 pp., text illustrations (Adams’s photographs). 4to, original white wrappers blind embossed with an illustration of Adams’s photo of El Capitan. As issued.
First edition. Essays on Adams by Anita Ventura Mozley, John Szarkowski, Anne Wilkes Tucker, Newhall Beaumont, James Alinder, Mary Alinder, Alfred Glass, Rosario Mazzeo, Alan Cranston, William A. Turnage, Wallace Stegner, and Peter C. Bunnell. James Alinder’s essay is a useful chronology of Adams’s life. The illustration on the upper wrapper is dramatic and unique.
($20-40)
5. Artistic Homes of California Issued with S.F. News Letter 1887-8. San Francisco: F. Marriott, Publisher; Office S.F. News Letter Flood Building Market and Fourth Streets San Francisco, [1888 or after]. [104] pp., 50 artotypes of architecture by Britton & Rey with captions printed in blue ink. Oblong small folio, original three-quarter black calf over maize and maroon gilt-lettered cloth, title and panel lines in gilt on spine. Calf slightly rubbed, professionally rebacked with original spine preserved, interior very fine. Very rare.
Norris 488. One of several manifestations of this book, which was issued under this title several times with various numbers of descriptions and views. (The Bancroft Library, for example, holds several copies of the book, one of which has only 27 plates.) The individual reproductions were originally published by Britton & Rey between 1887 and 1890 as supplements to the San Francisco News Letter. Here, each illustration is preceded by a leaf with descriptive text on one side and an ad on the other. This copy, except for numbers 38 and 43, matches the printed plate list. The originals published here appeared in the periodical between March 19, 1887, and March 10, 1888.
Issued at the height of Victorian California exuberance and expansion, this work showcases not only the wealth and taste of the city’s leading citizens but also the skills and craft of the tradespeople who constructed these homes. Some structures are located in San Jose and Oakland. This beautiful documentary preserves images of many homes; the majority of those in San Francisco are no longer standing. An artotype is a variation of a collotype.
($1,500-3,000)
6. AUGER, Édouard. Voyage en Californie...(1852-1853). Paris: L. Hachette, 1854. [4] 238 [2, blank] 8 pp. 8vo, original green printed illustrated wrappers, original glassine dust jacket. Minor losses at spine extremities and lower right corner of wrappers, scattered light foxing, old ink stamp of Ministère de l’Intérieur on half title, otherwise as issued.
First edition ofone of the better French accounts of the Gold Rush. Byrd 73. Cowan I, p. 9. Cowan II, p. 23. Hill 38. Howes A393. Kurutz, The California Gold Rush 24. Monaghan 118: “The author states that he went to California from simple curiosity and a love of travel, and not to seek gold. He studied the mines, the miners, and the Indians. He found thousands of Frenchmen who were stranded in California. The religious revivals which he witnessed he thought were worthy of the middle ages. Lauds the generous and noble instincts of the Americans.” Norris 154. Rocq 15679. Sabin 2376. Wheat, Books of the California Gold Rush 7.
This book was issued as part of a long series called “Chemins de fer,” intended to be sold to train travelers to amuse them during their trip. Because Auger was a sightseer in California not involved in the scramble for gold, his account projects a more objective view. His description of a cockfight in Panama is highly unusual (pp. 86-89), and he devotes an entire somewhat sympathetic if not wide-eyed chapter to lynchings, several of which he describes as an eyewitness (pp. 205-219).
($200-400)
7. AUGER, Édouard. Voyage en Californie...(1852-1853). Paris: L. Hachette, 1854. [4] 238 [2, blank] pp. 8vo, contemporary blue and brown marbled wrappers with later plain green paper spine. Spine slightly detaching along upper joint, light foxing, otherwise very good. Preserved in a blue cloth slipcase.
First edition, second issue of preceding (with half title canceled; otherwise from the same setting of type as the “Chemins de fer” issue above).
($100-200)
8. AUSTIN, Mary [Hunter]. California: The Land of the Sun. Painted by Sutton Palmer, Described by Mary Austin. London: Adam and Charles Black, [1914]. viii, 178 [2, ads] pp., 32 tipped-in color illustrations, 1 folded map in sepia: Sketch Map Accompanying “California” by Sutton Palmer and Mary Austin (A. & C. Black, London). 4to, original green pictorial cloth with color illustration on upper cover and title in gilt on decorated spine. Very minor bumping to spine and corners; interior, plates, and edges lightly foxed; else very fine in a lovely binding.
First edition. Cowan I, p. 23. Rocq 16661. By turns a mystic, pragmatist, conservationist, and scholar, Austin was the foremost California woman of letters during her lifetime and moved in distinguished literary and scientific circles both in the U.S. and abroad. H. G. Wells stated that she was the most intelligent woman in America. This work is another in her line of entrancing physical descriptions of various California locales, beautifully printed by the London firm responsible for many such handsome tomes. Harold Sutton Palmer (1854-1933) was a well-known English Victorian landscape artist and book illustrator who contributed to many books by this publisher.
($150-300)
9. BAKER, [George Holbrook] & [Edmund Lorenzo] BARBER. Sacramento Illustrated [wrapper title]. Sacramento: Barber & Baker (Printed by Monson and Valentine, San Francisco), 1855. 36 pp., printed in three columns, 33 wood engravings (map, illustrations, views). Folio, original tan pictorial upper wrapper, stitched (lacks lower wrapper). Wrapper and text creased at center where formerly folded; upper wrapper expertly strengthened at lower left; uniformly browned and with slight losses (affecting border and illustration); interior uniformly lightly stained and foxed. Preserved in a red cloth folding box with black leather label.
First edition, second issue, of “the first illustrated history of Sacramento” (cf. Howell 50, California 1413). In this issue, the list of illustrations on the upper wrapper does not correspond exactly to the contents and there is an errata pasted to p. 29. The woodcut on p. 19 is also a second state, a pig having been substituted. Cowan I, pp. 11-12: “Contains 32 of the earliest views of Sacramento.... This work has long been excessively rare.” Cowan, II, p. 34. Cf. Greenwood 547: “Earliest views of Sacramento.” Greenwood 548. Hamilton, Early American Book Illustrators and Wood Engravers II, p. 78. Huntington-Clifford Exhibit (“Possible Titles for an Expanded Zamorano 80”) C:“This publication shows the kinds of illustrations which were used in California pictorial letter sheets.” Howes B127. Kurutz, The California Gold Rush 35b. Rocq 6617. Streeter Sale 2777.
A publication intended to right the wrongs that had been inflicted on the city and the state by erroneous authors who concentrated “on the sterility of our soil, the unhealthiness of our climate, [and] the wild, unsettled state of society, business, etc.” Although relying heavily on published sources listed on p. [1], the authors also made use of personal recollections and illustrations “to rescue from oblivion some facts now fresh in the memory of the living that else might be buried with the dead, or become obscured by the mold of age.” The authors confidently predict that their city will easily eclipse San Francisco in size and importance.
($1,500-3,000)
10. [BAKER, S. F. or Peter Browning (attributed)]. Outline History of an Expedition to California: Containing the Fate of the Get All You Can Mining Association. Designed and Engraved by XOX [wrapper title]. New York: H. Long & Bro., 1849. 32 pp. printed on one side only, every page with mordant illustrations of the Gold Rush. Oblong 8vo, original tan pictorial wrappers. Upper wrapper detached, wraps lightly soiled and curled, slightly shaken, stitched as issued but some broken, a few modern light pencil notes on upper wrapper and p. 1, interior fine. In a worn blue half calf slipcase. A remarkable survival of an extremely fragile piece printed on poor paper.
First edition. Cowan II, p. 466: “The illustrations are quite brutal.” Groce & Wallace (Baker). Howes B50. Kurutz, The California Gold Rush 474: “This satirical series of cartoons begins with this vivid warning: ‘The Devil encircles California...and from his magic pipe sends forth his emissaries to fill the place with bait.’” Sabin 57955. Streeter Sale 2545. Centered on leader Jonathan Swapwell, this is a singular send-up of desperate and naive Yankee gold seekers who, upon their journey to California, more often found disease, misery, hard living, and death rather than wealth. A few manage to return home, including M. Crapo, who is depicted on p. 14 in a pensive mood, having already seen the elephant long before reaching the goldfields. The ninety-one cartoon panels, apparently by Samuel F. Baker, are masterpieces of American nineteenth-century satiric depiction. As Streeter implies, this is an early pictorial burlesque of the overland journey to the gold regions (but see Jeremiah Saddlebags, item 160).
($3,000-6,000)
11. BARTLETT, John R. Personal Narrative of Explorations and Incidents in Texas, New Mexico, California, Sonora, and Chihuahua, Connected with the United States and Mexican Boundary Commission, during the Years 1850, ’51, ’52, and ’53. New York & London: D. Appleton, 1854. [2] xxii, 506; [2] xviii [1, blank] 624 [2, ads] pp., 2 folded lithographed frontispieces on tinted grounds, 29 woodcut engravings, 14 lithographs on tinted grounds, numerous woodcut illustrations in text, 1 folded map (new paper backing). 2 vols. in one, 8vo, rebound in modern full green levant morocco, spines with raised bands and gilt-lettered red leather spine labels. Light uniform age toning and occasional offsetting from lithos, generally a very good, clean copy, with blind stamps of the Boston Society of Natural History on title page of vol. 1 and most plates.
First edition. Abbey 658. Basic Texas Books 12. Clark, Old South III:272. Cowan I, p. 13. Cowan II, p. 36. Flake 325. Graff 198: “An essential book for the Southwest.” Hill 74. Howes B201. Plains & Rockies IV:234:1. Rader 287. Raines, p. 22. Sabin 3746. Saunders 2721. Streeter Sale 173: “Bartlett’s was the first thoroughly scholarly description of the Southwest.” Wheat, Mapping the Transmississippi West 798: “Among the most important Western maps...excellent early map showing Gadsden Purchase Boundary.” Wheat, Maps of the California Gold Region 252.
Although a competent reporter and scholar, Bartlett was not a sterling boundary commissioner and is remembered for a blunder that cost the U.S. the price of the Gadsden Purchase. “The history of the Mexican Boundary survey was, perhaps more than any other episode in the American West, colored by ineptitude, personal animosity, ambition and political interference. It was to have significant effect on the final shape of the region” (Martin & Martin 40). The crux of the problem lay in errors in the Disturnell map, used to determine the boundary in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which distorted the area along the Rio Grande and near El Paso. The Mexicans claimed that lines of latitude and longitude should be adhered to, while it was to the advantage of the U.S. to establish the boundary according to geographical locations. Bartlett compromised, unknowingly giving up an area not only rich in copper mines, but also containing a portion of the only practical route for a southern railroad to California. This created a great deal of the conflict between the party members, as well as “a political issue of the greatest importance in Washington.... The issue was defused in 1853 with the Gadsden Purchase, a treaty in which the United States obtained the disputed territory, as well as additional lands and other Mexican concessions, in return for cash payment” (Martin & Martin 40). Bartlett had greater success later as John Carter Brown’s librarian.
($500-1,000)
12. BELCHER, Edward. Narrative of a Voyage around the World, Performed in Her Majesty’s Ship Sulphur, during the Years 1836-1842.... London: Henry Colburn, 1843. xxii [i.e., xxxviii] [2] 387 pp., engraved frontispiece, 7 engraved plates, 3 folded engraved maps, text illustrations + vi [2] 324 [3] 326 [327]-474 pp., engraved frontispiece, 10 engraved plates, 20 engraved text illustrations (total 19 plates + 3 maps). 2 vols., 8vo, contemporary three-quarter leather over boards, spine with raised bands and gilt-lettered red and green morocco labels. Binding rubbed and worn, corners bent with small losses, hinges starting, text and plates browned.
First edition. Cowan I, p. 15. Cowan II, p. 44. Ferguson 3564. Forbes, Hawaiian National Bibliography 1377 (not noting mispagination in vol. 1 and calling in error for 12 plates in vol. 2). Hill 102. Howell 50, California 18. Howes B318. Hunnewell, p. 23. Lada-Mocarski 117 (not noting mispagination in vol. 1). Sabin 4390. Wickersham 6543a. This surveying voyage, repeatedly extended by intervening circumstances, lasted nearly seven years from the time Belcher took command in Panama until the Sulphur returned to England. During his visit to California (vol. 1, pp. 311-340), he stopped at San Francisco and San Diego, although he does not seem to have been overly impressed with either of those locales.
($750-1,500)
§§§§§
As a result of the independence of Mexico from Spain in 1821, the naval department of San Blas was without ships. After three centuries of attempts to penetrate the former Spanish colony, England sought opportunities of exploitation and investment, and began to serve as the maritime carrier for Mexico on the Pacific coast. As a result, the great surveys of George Vancouver (1792-1793) notwithstanding, British navigators sought to expand knowledge of the Pacific Basin and continue the national obsession, the search for a northern water passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Between 1825 and 1828, Frederick W. Beechey with the Blossom had explored the Pacific coast to the Arctic Ocean with Lieutenant Edward Belcher, a native of Nova Scotia, as surveyor. Dissatisfied with his explorations, Beechey, commanding the Sulphur, made a second voyage in 1836 but fell ill upon reaching Valparaiso and the expedition was continued under Henry Kellett. At Panama, Belcher, now a captain, joined the expedition and assumed command for the remainder of its exploration. Of particular importance is the exploration of California, not only because it included a monthlong survey of the Sacramento River from San Francisco Bay in longboats, but also because of the international situation of the region. France and England were, at the time, creditor nations of Mexico, which was unable to service the debts to the bankers of those nations, and both began extensive exploration to the end of possibly occupying the territory of California in payment of debts. During the years of Belcher’s survey, Abel Dupetit-Thouars (q.v.) and Eugène Duflot de Mofras (q.v.) were involved in surveys of California for similar reasons.