PBA Galleries

[6], xi-xii, [13]-98 pp. Illustrated with 20 mounted original albumen photographs credited to John P. Soule; tissue guards.  Two maps, one of which is not counted in the pagination. 26x16.7 cm. (10¼x6¾"), original purple cloth with front cover & spine decorated in black & gilt, rear cover with same design in blind, all edges gilt. Third Edition.

This particular issue of The Wonders of the Yosemite Valley, and of California by Samuel Kneeland, 1872, is another of the rarest books in Yosemite annals. Containing 20 photographs, rather than the usual 10, its text contains all of the information in the 1872 third edition of the work, but the list of illustrations is more extensive and thus printed differences between this variant  and the ordinary edition do exist. Because Kneeland included additional text and information in each of the subsequent editions of his work, the prices of all three editions have traditionally been much the same, with the sole exception of this prohibitively rare variant with 20 photographs. While Kneeland obtained the photographs from John P. Soule of Boston, the actual photographer is generally conceded by historians to have been Martin M. Hazeltine. Charles Weed, Carleton Watkins, Eadweard Muybridge, William Harris and Martin Hazeltine were the five photographers who produced known bodies of work on Yosemite between 1859 and 1869, when the first transcontinental railroad line was completed with the driving of the famed Last Spike at Promontory Summit, Utah. By the 1870’s the flood gates opened, and photographers poured into California in droves to record the scenic wonders of such meccas as Yosemite and the Big Trees. But Weed, Watkins, Muybridge, Harris, and Hazeltine were the pioneers who led the way. Provenance: Eldon Grupp.