PBA Galleries

Frontis and 39 plates.  Additionally this copy has been extra-illustrated with 15 of 20 California manuscript and printed ephemeral items, as issued by the publisher.  (Large 8vo), tan linen spine, blue-green paper boards, printed paper label, untrimmed, pictorial endpapers. Second Edition, considerably expanded from the first of 1889; one of fifty-five special numbered copies (of 250), signed by the publisher and editor.  

Ephemera items lacking are: 

• A copy of a letter from William Heath Davis to O.S. Cressy...
• Schedule of sales made by Rodman Price in the early 'Fifties...
• Cancelled stock certificate of the famous "Yellow Jacket Silver Mining Co.," 1888
• Business note (with original envelope) from the Downiesville to the San Francisco office of Wells, Fargo and Company. 1871.
• San Francisco Bulletin, January 22, 1864. 

The "El Dorado Edition" of William Heath Davis's famous account of California, first published in 1889 as Sixty Years in California and here expanded and elaborately illustrated. John Howell Books also produced this special extra-illustrated issue with ephemeral and manuscript items in an issue of 250 copies, with sub-limitations within the 250: The Argonaut edition, the Pioneer edition, the California Collectors' edition, the El Dorado edition, etc. Davis (1822-1909) was in California well before the invasion of the gringos, and his "collected reminiscent articles [are a] valuable source book" - Hart, Companion to California.