KAHN, Edgar M.
Bret Harte in California: A Character Study.
San Francisco: privately printed for members of the Chit Chat Club, 1951. One of only 25 copies.
8vo. 25 pp. Frontispiece portrait of Bret Harte by William H. Wilke, signed in pencil by the artist. Introduction by Carl I. Wheat. Designed and printed by Haywood H. Hunt. Cloth-backed marbled boards with a printed paper label on the front cover. A fine copy.
Copy No. 1 of the 25, inscribed by the author at the colophon: "Bishop Edward L. Parsons / With the esteem of / Edgar M. Kahn / December 1951" — the recipient being Edward Lambe Parsons, Episcopal Bishop of California.
Edgar M. Kahn's character study of Bret Harte (1836–1902), the writer whose The Luck of Roaring Camp and The Outcasts of Poker Flat made California's mining-camp life famous and who stood at the center of San Francisco letters in the years around the Civil War. The Chit Chat Club, founded in San Francisco in 1874, is a long-running essay society whose members read papers to one another; its privately printed keepsakes were issued in tiny numbers and seldom reach the trade.
A desirable association copy — the first copy of a 25-copy printing, from the author to a notable San Francisco figure.
SKU TO-2026-050
