TRUMAN, Ben. C.

Semi-Tropical California: Its Climate, Healthfulness, Productiveness, and Scenery; Its Magnificent Stretches of Vineyards and Groves of Semi-Tropical Fruit, Etc., Etc., Etc.

San Francisco: A.L. Bancroft & Company, 1874. First Edition. Octavo (23cm.); publisher's purple pictorial cloth stamped in gilt; 204pp. Boards rather rubbed with some brief splitting of cloth, corners bumped and cloth starting to peel at bottom fore-edge corner of upper cover, spine toned, rear free endpaper torn and partly affixed to rear pastedown. Good overall, though internally sound and upper cover gilt still quite brilliant.

Promotional work by the Rhode Island-born Civil War Major, who first arrived in Los Angeles to supervise the postal service only to leave this position in order to found the "Los Angeles Daily Star," in which he promoted California's "post-frontier promise of becoming a pastoral civilization. Truman envisioned a livelihood of hard work, though without exertion, that would bring into being a culture of prosperity, civility, and art" (Peter James Holliday, "American Arcadia" (2016), p. 51).

Price: $200.00

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