Search Results: Titles starting with C from Argonaut Book Shop

London: Faber and Faber, 1992 First edition. Specially packaged with a free promotional copy of the author's earlier novel, "Ratking." Black cloth with silver lettering to spine. A very fine copy in pictorial dust jacket. The next installment of the author's mystery series featuring Inspector Aurelio Zen, this time being a murder mystery at the Vatican..

Sonora: The Mother Lode Press, 1955 First edition. vii, [1], 158pp. 16 historic photographs, notes, bibliography, index. Tan cloth lettered in brown on spine and front cover. A very fine copy. Early explorations, early camps of Southern and Northern Calaveras, State government & county boundaries, crime and miner's justice, miners and mining, churches and preachers, schools and teachers, transportation and roads, etc. One of the photographs is stated to be an enlargement of a daguerreotype of Joaquin Murieta, given to sheriff Ben Marshall in 1850..

San Francisco: The Book Club of California, 1997 First edition. One of 1,000 copies produced by W. Thomas Taylor of Barksdale, Texas. Introduction by J.S. Holliday. xxvii, 771pp. Color plate, plus 24 unnumbered pages of illustrations; bibliography and index. Blue cloth, lettered and decorated in gilt. A very fine copy in publisher's plain white dust jacket. A fully annotated bibliography, this is a monumental work of reference. Eight years in the making, it contains descriptions of 1,126 issues and editions of 707 individual works, all in great detail and with summaries and publishing histories. Includes published diaries, journals, reminiscences, collections of letters, guidebooks, sermons, mining company reports, contemporary novels, etc. Absolutely essential to any Gold Rush collection. [Zamorano Select: 57]..

San Marino: Huntington Library, 1956 First edition. Signed by the Editor, Benjamin B. Richards. Pp. xvii, [1], 124. Map, notes, index. Cloth-backed decorated boards, paper spine label. A very fine copy. Presents the gold rush through the eyes of a seventeen-year-old merchant. "Davis and his brother, Josiah, of Nashua, New Hampshire, sailed from New York City via Panama for San Francisco and the gold fields. The journal begins on June 1, 1850, and concludes on May 26, 1854, with some gaps. The brothers operated a successful mercantile operation in Long Bar on the Yuba River before trying their luck in Oregon. Unsuccessful, they returned home. Stephen's description of their return trip across the Isthmus of Panama and of a riot between natives and Americans is dramatic. Tired of the New England climate, Stephen left for California on January 21, 1852, and kept a store at Coulterville, on Maxwell's Creek for the next two years. News of his brother's death ended his California adventure… Read More

San Francisco: California Historical Society, 1947 First book edition. 56pp. Frontispiece, 15 plates, text illustrations. Gilt-lettered red cloth. A fine copy. The three articles included are: "Sutter's Sawmill," by Aubrey Neasham, "Archaeological Investigation of Sutter Sawmill Site in 1947," by Robert F. Heizer, and "Artifacts from the Excavation of Sutter's Sawmill, 1947," by Franklin Fenenga. With an introduction by Joseph R. Knowland..

New York: Carlton & Porter, 1861 Twenty-first thousand. 348pp. + 4 pages of advertising. Sixteen engravings. Very minor damp stain along extreme upper edge of pages through most of the book. Minimal foxing throughout. Original blind-stamped brown cloth with gilt-lettered spine. Covers rubbed. A very good copy. An excellent account of life just after the Gold Rush. Includes quite a bit on missionary life, as well as sections on social life, hospitals, life among the miners, the extent and resources of California, etc..

Los Gatos: The Talisman Press, 1960 First edition. Limited to 975 copies. 296pp. Illustrations, portraits, facsimiles, etc. Cloth-backed boards. A very fine copy with dust jacket. One of the best on this California outlaw. History of this noted California outlaw, followed by the complete reprint (page 63 to end) of the book about Vasquez by George A. Beers, first published in 1875. At the time, Beers was a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle and a member of the posse hunting Vásquez. The original account by Beers is very rare. [Howes I: B-313; Howes II: B-306; Rocq: 7003; Six-Guns: 868]..

Los Angeles: Westernlore Press, 1958 First edition. Written in collaboration with Walker A. Tompkins, foreword by Earl Warren. xiv, [2], 489pp. Frontis portrait, 59 illustrations, pictorial endpapers; index. Brown cloth. A fine copy in spine-faded dust jacket. Autobiography of the newspaperman who started the "Santa Barbara News-Press," the oldest daily in Southern California..

San Francisco: The Grabhorn Press, 1933 One of 500 copies, reprinted by the Grabhorn Press, of the first book written and published in California (1849). . 101pp. plus a 30 page introduction. Illustrated by Valenti Angelo. Black cloth-backed pictorial boards, printed paper spine label. Offsetting to ends (as usual) but a very fine, bright and crisp copy with the elusive printed dust jacket (short one inch tear to top edge, small chip to spine). The author begins with an overall description of California and its history. He then goes on to give a general discourse on the mines and sage advice to miners, covering such practical subjects as a miner's outfit, the rocker, provisions, mining companies, horses, prospecting methods, health, winter in the mines, and descriptions of the mining camps. He then continues with a description of San Francisco and its harbor, noting the lack of women. Includes an excellent introduction by George D. Lyman along with fine illustrations by Valenti Angelo. [Kurutz:… Read More

Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1970 Second and best edition, revised and enlarged. 611pp. Index. Brown cloth. A very fine copy (lacking jacket). The standard bibliography of California history. Arranged by counties in alphabetical order and subdivided by county histories, directories, and general references. Includes a coded listing of California libraries that hold copies of each particular title. "A highly successful 1950 California State Centennial Project culminated in the first publication of California Local History... When published in 1970, the second edition contained 17,000 entries, a far cry from the 5,342 in the first" (Zamorano Select). [Zamorano Select: 11A]..

Claremont, California: The Saunders Press, 1946 First edition. Limited to 1500 copies. xviii, 184pp. Profusely illustrated. Spine faded with some minor spotting. A very good copy in chipped dust jacket. Signed by the author. A biography of an influential businessman of Pasadena, California..

Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1950 First edition. Octavo. 576pp. Index. Compiled by the California Library Association Committee on Local History. Dark red cloth. Spine slightly faded, general light shelfwear. Previous owner's signatures inside cover, some inked noationation throughout. Overall a good copy. A complete bibliography on works of California history. .

Georgetown, California: The Talisman Press, 1967 Second printing. 237pp. Portraits, illustrations, facsimiles, and maps. Index. Dark red cloth spine, printed yellow boards. Top corners slightly jammed, else a fine copy in slightly chipped, price-clipped pictorial dust jacket. An extremely comprehensive book on the California gold discovery, containing a mass of detailed accounts and sources relating to the event. Includes all known accounts by the participants..

Portland: The Champoeg Press, 1962 First edition. Limited to 750 copies designed and printed by Lawton Kennedy. Translated and edited by Ernest Falbo. Quarto. 148pp. Frontis portrait. Red cloth lettered and decorated in gilt. Spine slightly faded. A fine, uncut copy. Contains an account of his cattle drive from Missouri to California in 1853, a visit with Brigham Young, the assembling of his elegant prefabricated home in Belmont, etc. [Kurutz: 131-C]..

Los Angeles: The Talisman Press, 1960 Reprint of the extremely rare first edition of 1850 of which only 6 copies are known. This edition is limited to 750 copies and includes Dale Morgan's excellent 69 page introduction, extensive notes and an index. Edited by Dale Morgan. 219pp. Title-page vignette, 1 illustration, map endpapers; notes, index. Cloth-backed pictorial boards, paper spine label. A fine copy with pictorial dust jacket (top edge of jacket slightly chipped). Dr. M'Collum arrived in San Francisco on the Niantic in July of 1849. He traveled to Stockton and the Southern Mines but found that mining for gold was too strenuous. He went back to San Francisco and survived by practicing his profession. He then journeyed to Sacramento and the Northern Mines and again tried mining. Soon thereafter, he headed home via the Isthmus of Panama in early 1850. [Kurutz: 417-b]..

Glendale: The Arthur H. Clark Company, 1976 First edition. One of 1046 copies. Foreword by Richard Dillon. 272pp. Illustrations, portraits, index. Blue cloth, gilt. A fine copy with pictorial dust jacket (slight chipping to spine ends). George Gordon was among those who gained great wealth during the California Gold Rush in merchandising. He was a civic leader in San Francisco, land developer, and entrepreneur. Gertrude Atherton's "A Daughter of the Vine" told of a pioneer family destroyed by alcohol and torn by jealousy. This was the "romanticized" story of George Gordon and his family, though much exaggerated. This well-researched biography destroys Atherton's myth. [Clark and Brunet I: 229; Clark and Brunet II: 259]..

Georgetown: The Talisman Press, 1966 First edition. Scarce thus. 237pp. Portraits, illustrations, facsimiles, and maps. Dark red cloth spine, printed yellow boards. A very fine copy in price-clipped pictorial dust jacket. An extremely comprehensive book on the California gold discovery, containing a mass of detailed accounts and sources relating to the event. Includes all known accounts by the participants. According to a printed note by the publisher (seen in some copies), part of the edition of this title was destroyed by a fire at the bindery. Subsequently, a second printing was issue immediately the following year. The first printing (offered here) is very scarce. Kurutz makes no mention of the fire or of the second printing in his bibliography. [Kurutz:485]..

New York: Doubleday, 1935 First edition. Number 411 of 501 numbered copies. Quarto. 227pp. 112 plates on 99 leaves, 12 in color. Glazed linen stamped on front cover and spine in black and gold, beveled edges. Some ephemera pasted to blank endpapers. A fine copy with tape-repaired cardboard slipcase. The most extensive work on the history of California lithography and an essential reference. Peters has arranged the book alphabetically by publisher. He gives a history of the specific firm, known address or addresses and lists the primary lithographs produced. "Included in the text are brief biographical sketches of the most important artists or producers of the lithographs of the day" (Zamorano Select). The previous owner has pasted to the blank endpapers a few early Sacramento checks, letterhead of Sacramento's Buffalo Brewing Co., and a few wine labels. [Howes I: P-528; Howes II: P-259; Zamorano Select: 86]. .

Berkeley: Friends of the Bancroft Library, University of California, 1975 First book edition. Preface by N. Scott Momaday. [6], 57pp. Color frontis, five photographic plates, portrait, facsimile. Stiff red wrappers. A fine copy. Reprints two articles by this nineteenth-century anthropologist, best known for his "Tribes of California," published in 1877. California Indian Characteristics was first published in the Overland Monthly, 1875; Centennial Mission... was first published the Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1876. Also includes "Stephen Powers as Anthropologist" by Robert F. Heizer. Number 23 in the series of keepsakes issued by the Friends of the Bancroft Library for its members..

San Francisco: California Historical Society, 1964 First edition. One of 325 copies of the Deluxe Edition, printed on rag paper, numbered and signed by the editor. Edited with an introduction by Doyce B. Nunis. xxxii, 246pp. Frontis portrait, maps, illustrations, folding map, facsimiles (some folding). Extensive chapter notes and bibliography, index. Gilt-lettered and decorated cloth. A very fine copy with lightly faded publisher's slipcase. Father-in-law of Gertrude Atherton, namesake of Atherton, California (San Mateo county), etc. Atherton was a young man from New England in the early 1830's and an employee of a Santa Barbara merchant which brought him into intimate contact with the administrators of the secularized missions, the native inhabitants and the growing number of American settlers and visitors. He vividly recorded much of the political turmoil, civil-religious conflict, mushrooming trade, and foreign penetration of early Mexican California. His diary of those three years is… Read More