[VIRGINIA] "PORTE CRAYON" [pseud David Hunter Strother]

Virginia Illustrated: Containing a Visit to the Virginian Canaan, and the Adventures of Porte Crayon and His Cousins

New York: Harper and Brothers, 1857. First Edition. First printing. Octavo (25cm). Publisher's red blind-stamped cloth, decoratively titled in gilt on spine; xii,[13]-309pp; 4pp publisher's ads; illus. A brilliant copy, unfaded and practically free of wear save a bit of rubbing at crown of spine. Pale yellow coated endpapers darkened from binder's adhesive, else equally fine internally, with just a few tiny freckles of foxing to prelims. Near Fine overall, and most unusual thus. With the bookplate of noted Virginia bibliophile John W. Hancock (Sr.) to front pastedown, earlier ink ownership signature (illegible) to front free endpaper.

An uncommonly beautiful copy of Strother's semi-fictionalized narrative of a trip into the highland backcountry of western Virginia (now West Virginia), a region noted for its inaccessibility as well as its abundance of fish and game. The Canaan Valley (as it is now known), at this time almost completely uninhabited, was first described in detail in Phillip Pendleton Kennedy's The Blackwater Chronicle (1852), a work to which Strother contributed the illustrations. Strother (1816-1888), best-known by his nom-de-plume "Porte Crayon," was by the time of the present work one of the country's best-known "local-color" illustrators, known for his prolific contributions to Harper's Monthly (in which the present work was serialized). Virginia Illustrated, like the earlier Blackwater Chronicle, remains one of the best and earliest accounts of a region that is still regarded with awe and some trepidation by those famililar with its odd, sub-arctic flora and vast unsettled spaces. Not, strictly speaking, a rare book, but one that very seldom shows up in this condition.

Price: $750.00

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