Yo Semite 1878, Adventures of N & C
San Francisco: The Book Club of California [printed by Mallette Dean], 1964. Dean, Mallette. Limited Edition. Hardcover. One of 450 copies, quarto size, [131] pp., with original dust jacket, prospectus and order form. Fine / near fine. Item #19052024
An expanded version of fourteen-year-old Carrie LeConte's Yosemite journal of 1878, rewritten and enhanced with pen and ink sketches in 1880; Carrie accompanied her father, geologist Joseph LeConte (one of the first professors at Cal) on a camping expedition to the Yosemite region, which was then little-traveled. Her journal, with her own illustrations which have been coloured with blocks cut by Mallette Dean, were here printed for the first time.
(Harold) Mallette Dean (1907-1975), an eminent printer and illustrator of the San Francisco Bay Area, was one of twenty-six artists commissioned to paint murals in San Francisco's Coit Tower. He illustrated books for the Grabhorn Press for fifteen years, as well as printing and publishing books under his own imprint.
___DESCRIPTION : Bound in quarter linen and green, rust and black decorated paper boards, title and colophon in red and black, frontisportrait within gold frame, head-piece, tail-piece and illustrations in green and black, quotation on p. 3 in red, rules and page number ornaments in green, eight reproductions in colour of the author's sketches throughout the text, facsimiles of eleven pages of the original journal; English monotype Baskerville, machine made paper, quarto size (11 1/8" by 7 7/8"), pagination: [i-iv] v-xviii [1-113], limited edition, one of 450 copies, unnumbered. The publisher's dust jacket of green laid paper which matches that used for the boards, the jacket undecorated and without printing (plain). Original prospectus, a single sheet folded to four pp. measuring 10 15/16" by 7 5/8", the front (p. 1) with an illustration and title page information, the second page with an illustration and a lovely flowing initial capital letter that runs the length of the paragraph in the margin, information about the publication on the second and third pages, the back (p. 4) plain. The original order form in the format of a small envelope addressed on the front to "The Book Club of California", order information printed on the back over which the flap would have sealed.
___CONDITION: A fine copy, the binding clean and utterly without wear, a strong, square text block with solid hinges, the interior is clean and bright, and entirely free of prior owner markings; clean, crisp, and like new. The publisher's dust jacket near fine, without wear, mostly clean with a stray small spot or two on the front panel, the spine sunned and a prior owner wrote in ink "Yo-Semite - Le Conte"; the prospectus near fine, with some light sunning at the top margin and a few very shallow unintended creases, but clean and without noticeable wear; the order form the same. While not an uncommon publication, a delightful accounting of an early visitor to Yosemite and complete as few copies are, the book in fine condition and with the jacket, prospectus, and order form.
___CITATIONS: Grabhorn Press Bibliography, no. 117; Hawk no. 396.
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Price: $150.00