“ONE OF THE MOST SOUGHT OF ALL BOOKS RELATING TO MONTANA”: ONE OF ONLY 15 COPIES, INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR IN THE YEAR OF PUBLICATION, WITH 48 VINTAGE ALBUMEN PRINTS

FRANCIS, Charles Spencer. Sport among the Rockies. The Record of a Fishing and Hunting Trip in North-Western Montana. By the Scribe. Troy, New York: Troy Daily Times, 1889. Thick quarto, original publisher’s three-quarter brown morocco, raised bands, decorative endpapers, top edge gilt. Housed in a custom slipcase. $0.

Limited first edition, one of only 15 copies issued for private distribution, a collection of 25 letters authored by newspaper publisher Charles Francis, this presentation copy inscribed by him in the year of publication to “Mr. L. L. Warren, with the compliments of Charles S. Francis, Aug. 15, 1889,” featuring 48 vintage albumen prints (each five by eight inches and mounted on heavy card stock) displaying exceptional images of 19th-century Western America. This extremely scarce copy from the library of photographer and musician Graham Nash, with his signed bookplate.

“One of 15 copies printed for private distribution… This is a series of 25 delightful letters written by Charles Francis for the Troy Times, telling of a hunting trip to Montana in August and September of 1888” (Streeter VII:4110). The volume’s “magnificent and important mounted original photographs… are by the author himself and constitute an immensely important record of the Far Northwest, its towns, ranches, Indians, agencies, the Baker Massacre; Trapper Bill Weaver, Piegan Indians; the Big Horn; Starvation Camp; western horses and Indian ponies; horse thieves; Blackfoot Agency; life among the Indians; cattle ranges and ranches; Great Falls, its mushroom growth, future, etc. The volume is a veritable ‘book of the plains… one of the most sought of all books relating to Montana” (Eberstadt 136:445). Author Charles Francis was the son of Troy publisher John Francis, who served as President Grant’s “Minister to Greece—a post to which Charles Francis himself was destined to be appointed 30 years afterward by President McKinley” (Cornell Alumni News). After assuming ownership of the Troy Times, Francis journeyed with three fellow “Trojans… to the great Northwest in search of game, fish and adventure.” Francis’ exceptional albumen prints herein express the finest qualities of 19th-century American photography, which met “the challenge of depicting a new world without a long tradition of visual models [and] engendered a realistic, vernacular style of plain expression… [with] a confidence in fact and in the eloquence of clear exposition” (Waking Dream, 124). With text printed in double columns, engraved tailpieces. Volumes variously bound with 48 to 49 albumen prints. Eberstadt 136445. Howes F-311. Streeter VII:4110. With tipped-in bookplate of photographer and collector Graham Nash, signed by him.

Bright unfaded prints, tiny bit of wear to margin of one leaf (113) and very lightest dampstaining to lower edges of some leaves without affecting plates or text; light edge-wear to original boards. An outstanding near-fine copy of this extremely scarce presentation copy in original morocco.