A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf (1916)

Item Details

Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1916, Hardcover

Very Good+

Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin Company (The Riverside Press, Cambridge), 1916. First edition (with 'Published November 1916' on copyright page) 8.5 x 6 inches, in original green cloth with pictorial cover label in color,  lettered in white, top edge gilt, the other edges uncut, no dj. Edited and with an introduction by William Frederic Bade. Illustrated with several photographs, including a frontispiece portrait with tissue guard, map of Muir's walk on page 1. 

Light shelf-wear to the covers, now in a Mylar cover, light soiling on the back cover. Pages clean, with occasional light foxing in the margis

At age twenty-eight, Muir was blinded in an industrial accident. He lay in bed for two weeks wondering if he would ever see again. When his sight miraculously returned, Muir resolved to devote all his time to the great passion of his life - studying plants. He quit his job in an Indiana manufacturing plant, said good-bye to his family, and set out alone to walk from Kentucky to the Gulf of Mexico, sketching tropical plants along the way. He kept a journal of this thousand-mile walk and near the end of his life, now famous as a conservation warrior and literary celebrity, sent a typescript of it to his publisher.