Adventures in the Wilderness; or, Camp-Life in the Adirondacks ["Tourist's Edition" with extra maps and other materials]
Boston: Fields, Osgood, and Co., 1869. Hardcover. 7 1/4 by 5 inches; 183 by 125 mm. 12, vi, [7]-236 pages, plus [4] pp. ads. Hardcover, bound in orange cloth with black lettering, rules and ornaments to spine and front board. Worn at corners and at spine's head and tail; soiling to orange covers; rear hinge weak between the rear free endpaper and the preceeding blank leaf; faint to moderate dampstain to bottom inch of fore-edge and along two inches of the lower page edges; pages age-toned; tissue-guards missing except for the frontispiece's, and resulting offsetting from facing pages to the margins of the plate illustrations; offsetting to the plates' reverse sides, too. Written in pencil on a blank preliminary page is "Geo. F. Wade/Aug 1869/No. Cambridge/Mass" Item #573
Murray's successful 1869 book strongly boosted the development of outdoor-based tourism in the Adirondacks. Issued quickly afterward, also in 1869, this "Tourist's Edition" was distributed by (the Delaware and Hudson Railroad?) to passengers who had bought round-trip tickets (to what destination?). It includes a special section, "Plattsburg Route to the Adirondacks," by George F. Field, general agent of the Rutland, Ogdensburg and Montreal Railway Line, and also includes train and boat schedules for the trip. It was designed for use on the road, where, judging from its condition, this copy may have spent some time. The Tourist's Edition is now harder to find, perhaps because of the abuse many copies must have suffered. (Discuss OCLC holdings.) Foldout map of the Rutland, Ogdensburg and Montreal and the Fitchburg, Rutland & Saratoga railroad lines and connections. Tissue-protected frontispiece and seven other plates from engravings; the frontispiece and three other plates are signed HF or Fenn for Harry Fenn, an immigrant from England later a noted illustrator, particularly for his contributions to William Cullen Bryant's landmark Picturesque America. Two illustrations in the text. Four pages of ads--three are for fishing tackle from the J. C. Conroy & Co. store in New York and the William Read & Sons and Bradford & Anthony stores in Boston, and the fourth is for the book On the Wing, by John Bumstead. Inside each board is a built-in pocket to hold maps and other material. Murray's work itself consists of 55 pages of advice for travel and outdoor recreation in the Adirondacks, a much longer section of fictional Adirondack adventures, and a four-page appendix in praise of the adjustable Beach gun sight. This title, though not the Tourist's Edition, is item 1766 in Lyle H. Wright's American Fiction 1851-1875. It is also viewable online from Indiana University, at http://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/wright2/wright2-1766 The Tourist's Edition was issued with two maps, (Colton's, lacking in this copy but supplied in a photocopy of a map issued in a 1970 Adirondack Museum/Syracuse University Press reprinting) and "Map of the Great Through Route to the Adirondacks," also labeled "Lake Champlain Excursion Routes, via Saratoga, Niagara Falls, Montreal, Quebec, White Mountains, Lake Champlain, Lake George, &c," (dimensions), and folded several times but (describe condition). The pockets also contain two other items of interest. One is a (dimensions), three-page piece of ephemera, titled "Ho! (etc)" and dated 1870. Its first page (describe text), and its second and third pages are advertisements for (hotel) and (store). (Describe its condition.) The second item, clipped from the Boston Journal of (date), is Murray's "Reply to His Calumniators," a lengthy response (roughly 7,000 words) to (whom? critics?). (Describe its condition.) The "Reply" was included, as an appendix, in the 1970 reprinting.
Price: $750.00