PBA Galleries

2 volumes. xii, 251; [2], 247 + [35] ad pp. Illus. with 8 tinted lithograph plates. 7½x5, rebound in late 19th/early 20th century ¾ gilt-ruled brown calf & cloth, spines elaborately tooled in gilt, raised bands, morocco lettering pieces, top edges gilt. First Edition.

One of the most influential and widely read books on the California Gold Rush. A successful author and correspondent with the New York Tribune, Bayard Taylor went to California specifically to record the Gold Rush. The Zamorano Eighty notes that "This work by an eminent writer and artist is probably the outstanding book on the early gold rush in California. The author's description of the Constitutional Convention at Monterey is the best we have, as are also the views he gives us of the earliest mining camps. The colored plates are beautifully tinted works of art depicting San Francisco, Monterey, Sacramento, and the mining camps. Bayard Taylor saw everything and recorded everything he saw." 45 advertisement pages are called for, but there seems to have been some variation in this number; the ads in the present copy are numbered 13-45, [2], with pages 13a and 17a as well. The cloth from the spine strips is mounted at the end of each volume. Cowan p.630; Graff 4074; Howes T43; Kurutz 618a; Sabin 94440; Streeter 2654; Wheat Gold Rush 204; Zamorano Eighty 73.