Details
HARTE, BRET. The Lost Galleon and Other Tales. San Francisco: Towne & Bacon, Printers, 1867. 8vo, original brown cloth, gilt-stamped decoration on front cover, chocolate-colored endpapers, wear at ends of spine, some edges and fore-corners, front free endpaper pasted to the following flyleaf, small label removed from inside front cover, a signature starting, blue half morocco slipcase. FIRST EDITION of Harte's second book (poems), published in late December and following his first book, Condensed Novels, by some two months, PRESENTATION COPY TO HIS PATRONESS JESSIE BENTON FRÉMONT inscribed by Harte on the front free endpaper: "Mrs Jessie Benton Frémont from the Author San Francisco Feb. 21st. 1868" (Portion of space between first three lines in inscription scraped touching a few letters, small tear above inscription.) BAL 7242. Contains the first appearance of the poem "To the Pliocene Skull."
"Harte's sudden emergence before the public eye came about principally through the intervention in his career of Jessie Benton Frémont [wife of General John C. Frémont and daughter of former Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton]...Jessie Frémont...read one of his articles in the Golden Era [San Francisco newspaper] and decided that the young journalist showed promise...she invited Harte to her home in the city. She praised his work, discussed his plans with him, and presented him to her friends...She took him under her wing, read his manuscripts, directed him wisely to look for subjects in his immediate environment...financially she was his guardian angel..." -- Franklin Walker, San Francisco's Literary Frontier (New York, 1939), pp. 106-107 & 131.
"Harte's sudden emergence before the public eye came about principally through the intervention in his career of Jessie Benton Frémont [wife of General John C. Frémont and daughter of former Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton]...Jessie Frémont...read one of his articles in the Golden Era [San Francisco newspaper] and decided that the young journalist showed promise...she invited Harte to her home in the city. She praised his work, discussed his plans with him, and presented him to her friends...She took him under her wing, read his manuscripts, directed him wisely to look for subjects in his immediate environment...financially she was his guardian angel..." -- Franklin Walker, San Francisco's Literary Frontier (New York, 1939), pp. 106-107 & 131.
Provenance
The Frank J. Hogan copy, bookplate (sale, Parke-Bernet, 23 January 1945, lot 212, purchased by David A. Randall of Scribner's Rare Books for $280, with his condition notation "O.K.")