Four Months Among the Gold-Finders in Alta California: Being the Diary of an Expedition from San Francisco to the Gold Districts
London: David Bogue, 1849. First Edition. 207pp. Octavo [20 cm] Contemporary 3/4 leather over light brown boards. Decorative gilt stamping to backstrip. Very good. Repair to front hinge. Frontis map of the gold fields of California. Bookplate from the noted California collector, Daniel Guatave Volkmann, on the front pastedown. Item #10909
Consulting what reports he could find and exercising his excellent imagination, young Henry Vizetelly produced in London an account of "personal experiences" in the California diggings that fooled most of the authorities for upwards of half a century. Even though now exposed as fiction, by Vizetelly's own confession, this unique effort remains a valuable item of Gold Rush literature. It was translated early on into French, German, and Swedish. Cowan I p.25. Eberstadt 125:225. Graff 4494. Howes V134. Kurutz 653a. Sabin 8350. Wheat Books 217. Wheat Maps of the Gold Region 60.
Price: $350.00