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PROPERTY FROM THE FAMILY OF HAROLD BELL WRIGHT
Harold Bell Wright (1872-1944) was a preacher, outdoorsman, and enormously popular fiction writer in the first quarter of the 20th century. Undoubtedly one of the most financially successful authors in American history, his first twelve books sold 10 million copies. In 1911 alone, he sold 1.3 million volumes; the population of the United States totaled 95 million. His titles were even available from the Sears Robuck catalogue.
Wright was a great storyteller, a master of description, with a straightforward style, a man who never considered his efforts "literature." His western themes, spiced with romance and moral dilemmas, appealed to the masses.
He is best known for two works - The Shepherd of the Hills and The Winning of Barbara Worth. An historical novel and the best selling book of his career, The Winning of Barbara Worth, published in 1911, told of the reclamation of the Imperial Valley and the failed irrigation project on the Colorado River. Wright had lived in Redlands, California in 1907, and irrigation projects of the Santa Ana River some twenty years earlier had transformed the desert (See lot 10).
Harold Bell Wright was an environmentalist and cultural anthropologist. He and Zane Grey were instrumental in preserving the Saguaro Cactus in the Sonora Desert near Tucson. For their efforts, President Roosevelt declared the area a National Forest. Wright also recorded the stories and legends of the Papago Indians of the Sonora Desert in a book entitled Long Ago Told: Legends of the Papago Indians, 1929.
Wright suffered from tuberculosis and moved to Tucson, Arizona, where he lived from 1919 to 1935. The house there is on the Arizona Register of Historic Places. The inserts below illustrate his Curtis orotones (lots 1-5) in-situ circa 1921.
EDWARD S. CURTIS (1868-1954)
A Chief of the Desert - Navaho
Details
EDWARD S. CURTIS (1868-1954)
A Chief of the Desert - Navaho
Orotone. 1904. Signed in the image.
14 x 11in. (28 x 35.6cm.) In an original Curtis Studio frame.
A Chief of the Desert - Navaho
Orotone. 1904. Signed in the image.
14 x 11in. (28 x 35.6cm.) In an original Curtis Studio frame.
Literature
See: Curtis, The North American Indian, Portfolio 1, pl. 26; and Cardozo, Sacred Legacy, p. 119.