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Limited Edition 600 copies, First Edition. Hard cover, 8vo, in quarter black cloth with printed decorated paper-covered boards in a vertically-striped pattern in shades of green, titles blocked vertically in gold to the spine, olive green end papers, title page printed in grey, black and red, with a frontispiece portrait of the subject. Richard Hoffman, printer. CONDITION: Fine. **James Bradley Thayer (1831-1902), Harvard Law professor and constitutional scholar, wrote "A Western Journey with Mr. Emerson," for publication originally in 1884. He recounts a trip taken by rail between Boston and San Francisco, California in the Spring of 1871 with a discreetly unnamed traveling party which did, however, include the Transcendental thinker, Ralph Waldo Emerson, a distant relative and fellow Harvard man. Emerson apparently used the tour as a working holiday, sprucing up his work "Faust," for instance, and Thayer recollects the writer's opinions on a number of contemporary authors and other topics, dispensed in candid conversations. As a historic travelogue about the newly-connected transcontinental rail system in the United States, though, the work brings alive the early experience of tourism from the close confines of the Pullman car, highlighting the still sometimes dangerous conditions endured by rail passengers. Thayer's most interesting observations come from the people he and Emerson meet along the way, among them the Mormon president Brigham Young. An epochal meeting with conservationist John Muir is also documented. Shirley Sargent's excellent Foreward fleshes out a good number of Thayer's original allusions. Includes original prospectus. California Book Club Publication Number 163.
Ref: FINE 9303
$75.00