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Austin, Mary : The Land of Little Rain

Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Boston, MA, 1903

No. 2 of the Zamorano Eighty. Original publisher's brown cloth binding with gilt lettering on front cover and spine. Top edge gilt. Color illustration on front cover. The illustration shows three vultures flying in the sky with a coyote, cow skull, and cacti in the foreground. 6 3/4" x 8 1/2." 281 pages, complete. Black-and-white half-tone plates and marginal illustrations, complete. Printed by the Riverside Press in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Former owner's black-and-white illustrated bookplate tipped in on front pastedown: "Frank Cutter Deering." Frank Cutter Deering (1866-1939) was an American financier and book collector. He also served as a member of the Maine State Legislature. Deering specialized in collecting Americana. Pages and covers are virtually pristine and intact. Slight offsetting on front free endpaper from bookplate. A truly Fine and unworn copy. A love letter to California desert country written as a series of essays. Accented with beautiful illustrations by E. Boyd Smith comprising full-page plates and detailed, quaint illustrations in the margins. E. Boyd Smith (1860-1943) was an American artist and book illustrator best-known for his illustrations in children's books. Excerpt from the Zamorano 80, no. 2: "These charming sketches of the desert and semi-desert country comprising the Owens Valley and the approaches to the great sink of Death Valley have become practically a classic." Mary Hunter Austin (1868-1934) was an American author best-known for her writings about the southwestern region of the United States. The Land of Little Rain is her best-known work. In this book, Austin blends nonfictional observations with romantic prose and writes about the various inhabitants of the California desert, including people and animals. Inanimate parts of nature, such the mountains, sky, and plants, also take on their own character through Austin's style of writing. Among the people Austin includes in her essays are the people of the Paiute and Shoshone tribes ("Shoshone Land" and "The Basket Maker"), odd stragglers such as "pocket hunting" miner ("The Pocket Hunter"), and members of an idyllic Latin-American community ("The Little Town of the Grape Vines"). The following are the titles of the essays: "The Land of Little Rain," "Water Trails of the Ceriso," "The Scavengers," "The Pocket Hunter," "Shoshone Land," "Jimville--A Bret Harte Town," "My Neighbor's Field," "The Mesa Trail," "The Basket Maker," "The Streets of the Mountains," "Water Borders," "Other Water Borders," "Nurslings of the Sky," and "The Little Town of the Grape Vines." No. 2 of the Zamorano Eighty. The Zamorano Eighty are a collection of eighty significant books on California history that was compiled by the Zamorano Club in 1945.. Illustr.: Smith, E. Boyd. Book. Book Condition: Fine. Binding: Hardcover

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