"HIS PROSE IS AS TIMELESS AS HIS MESSAGE": JOHN MUIR'S MY FIRST SUMMER IN THE SIERRA, 1911 FIRST EDITION, INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR TO MRS. HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN

MUIR, John. My First Summer in the Sierra. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1911. Octavo, original dark green pictorial cloth, top edge gilt. $8800.

First edition of one of the best books of nature writing by the founder of the Sierra Club, extensively illustrated, warmly inscribed by Muir to Lucretia Thatcher Perry Osborn, a writer and the wife of eminent scientist and educator Henry Fairfield Osborn: "To Mrs. Henry Fairfield Osborn, active, able, untirable wife, mother, father, sister, brother, friend, all in one faithful loveful benevolent blend. - John Muir, Castle Rock, July 12, 1911."

"In 1868 Muir went to California, heading directly from San Francisco to the Sierra Nevada, on foot… He fell in love with the Sierra and was entranced by its Yosemite Valley. He assumed the task of protecting the valley from degradation and made it his home for six years. All the while, he undertook expeditions into the surrounding forests and peaks to make notes and sketches in his journals, the source of future books… Although he came to be a fine prose stylist, Muir never found writing easy. Nonetheless, he contributed articles to Scribner's and Century and won a special ally in the editor of the latter magazine, Robert Underwood Johnson, whom he took camping in Yosemite to show him the damage done to the Sierra Nevada by grazing sheep. Johnson helped Muir campaign for the establishment of Yosemite National Park, which became reality in 1890. In 1892 Muir organized the Sierra Club to foster conservation of wild lands, particularly the Sierra and Yosemite… Muir is of such transcendent importance as an activist-conservationist that his worth as a naturalist is sometimes underestimated and his considerable skill as a writer obscured. His prose is as timeless as his message. His first book, The Mountains of California (1894), is probably his best, but My First Summer in the Sierra (1911) is a strong rival" (ANB). Illustrated with photogravure frontispiece of Liberty Cap and 11 photogravures from photographs in the Sierra by Herbert Gleason, as well as numerous in-text reproductions of sketches made by Muir during his first summer there in 1869. With Lucretia Osborn's bookplate. In 1893, Muir was introduced to Henry Fairfield Osborn and his wife, the author Lucretia Thatcher Perry Osborn; Muir and the Osborns became close personal friends, travel companions and frequent correspondents. Muir sometimes stayed at the Osborns' Hudson River estate—as he did in July of 1911, when this inscription was written, while he was hard at work editing the final proofs of The Yosemite and finishing The Story of My Boyhood and Youth.

Interior clean, gilt very slightly dimmed, minor rubbing to extremities. A near-fine signed presentation copy in original cloth.