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[ii], 490, [4] ad pp. (8vo) original green cloth stamped in gilt and black. First Edition.

The Zamorano Eighty reflects that the book is "...of course, not a great novel. But it is an exceedingly important California book for two reasons. A popular book, it spread the fame of California and no doubt inspired a considerable number of people to migrate here... And, second, by exposing the abuses to which Southern California Indians were subjected, it resulted in numerous wholesale reforms in the Administration of Indian affairs...." BAL 10456; Cowan p.307; Zamorano Eighty 46; a Peter Parley to Penrod 'border-line selection'.

Jackson was an activist dedicated to improving United States government treatment of Native Americans. She gained the widest public with her novel Ramona, dramatizing the ill treatment by the United States government of Native Americans in Southern California. Ramona achieved rapid success, although the public has responded to the novel more as a romantic love story than as a tract of political reform. Having had many editions, Ramona is still in print. The novel of Ramona was adapted as a play and for three films. Encouraged by the popularity of her book, Jackson planned to write a children's story about Indian issues, but less than a year after the publication of Ramona, she died of cancer in San Francisco, California. She was a classmate of the poet Emily Dickinson, also from Amherst. The two corresponded for much of their lives, but few of their letters have survived.