John Muir - Delphi Complete Works of John Muir US (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 6)

The Complete Works of

JOHN MUIR

(1838-1914)

Contents

Delphi Classics 2017

Version 1

The Complete Works of

JOHN MUIR

By Delphi Classics, 2017

With new introductions by
Fred Burwell
www.fredburwell.com

Complete Works of John Muir (US)

First published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by Delphi Classics.

Delphi Classics, 2017.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

ISBN: 9781786560810

Delphi Classics

is an imprint of

Delphi Publishing Ltd

Hastings, East Sussex

United Kingdom

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Muirs birthplace Dunbar, East Lothian, Scotland

A photo of the birthplace (left) and childhood home (right) of John Muir in Dunbar, Scotland.

Dunbar is a town on the southeast coast of Scotland, approximately 28 miles east of Edinburgh

Picturesque California , a compilation edited by John Muir, was also his first major publication. Originally sold by subscription, distributed monthly in 30 parts, the J. Dewing Publishing Company eventually published the book in two parts between 1888 and 1890. Put together, the book was elaborately illustrated, featuring over 600 etchings, wood etchings, photogravures, many further text illustrations and 120 colored plates, all created by eminent American artists. As well as editing the many contributions by other authors, Muir contributed half a dozen articles himself about the land he knew so well, including, Peaks and Glaciers of the High Sierra, The Passes of the High Sierra, The Yosemite Valley, Mount Shasta, Washington and the Puget Sound, and The Basin of the Columbia River. Muirs work, which took years to complete, was, according to the December 1888 issue of Overland Monthly , an undertaking on a truly magnificent scale.

Ella Sterling Cummins, in The Story of the Files A Review of Californian Writers and Literature , issued by the Worlds Fair Commission of California in 1893, provided an assessment of this unusual two-volume set:

Very beautiful are these volumes of the Picturesque California, devoted also to the region west of the Rocky mountains, from Alaska to Mexico. The illustrations are superb and in every way it is creditable to the coast. It is not of such historical value as the Bancroft Histories, as it contains merely descriptive writing; but it is like a portfolio of beautiful views, adapted to delighting the eye and the imagination.

The proof editions are magnificent specimens of the art of book-making, while the photogravures and etchings appear on the finest India paper, artistically mounted.

Cummins quoted George Hamlin Fitchs comments about the books value for readers, especially for those who had not experienced and might never experience the remarkable fascination of Californian landscape:

A work so comprehensive as this will give to Eastern readers for the first time a satisfactory idea of the wonderful grandeur, beauty and variety of California scenery. Its illustrations will form a picture gallery of the superb natural features of the slope... Thus far this is the first illustrated work on the Pacific Coast that is worthy of the scenery it represents. Its strongest claim to support is that it gives the Eastern reader who has been unable to see the wonders of California an adequate conception of the grandest scenery in the world, while the descriptions and sketches will furnish an idea of the resources of the Pacific Slope a region which is still underrated by most Eastern people.

Fitch also offered some of the earliest praise of John Muirs talents as a literary author:

Muirs description of the great fall of the Yosemite is perhaps as good an example as could be selected of his power of painting a picture in words and of the patient observation and skillful search that bring to him every secret of Nature.

Overland Monthly praised the work for its value in attracting settlers to California, an area still in its pioneer days:

From the boomers point of view, it is a most invaluable piece of advertising. As its avowed purpose is to select for description the beautiful, it is perfectly honest in containing only attractive aspects of the region; and its permanent artistic and literary value will keep it a sort of standing evangel for years and even for generations of the country it treats of.

In 1976, Running Press reprinted Picturesque California as West of the Rocky Mountains .

One of the original monthly parts

John Muir in his beloved mountains

John Muir in a contemplative mood

Looking across the broad, level plain of the Sacramento and San Joaquin from the summit of the Coast Range opposite San Francisco, after the sky has been washed by the winter rains, the lofty Sierra may be seen throughout nearly its whole extent, stretching in simple grandeur along the edge of the plain, like an immense wall, four hundred miles long and two and a half miles high, colored in four horizontal bands; the lowest rose-purple of exquisite beauty of tone, the next higher dark purple, the next blue, and the highest pearl-white all delicately interblending with each other and with the pale luminous sky and the golden yellow of the plain, and varying in tone with the time of day and the advance of the season.