The Eggshell Season: A Letter from Monterey

GARNER, William R.

The Eggshell Season: A Letter from Monterey.

Monterey, California: Privately Printed, 1976.

A miniature book, approximately 3 × 2³⁄₁₆ inches, 7 pp., hand-set in Bookman type and printed in a limited edition of 100 copies by Roger R. Hilleary. Issued with its original envelope.

The text reproduces a letter written from Monterey by William R. Garner — the English expatriate who served as secretary to Walter Colton, the first U.S. alcalde of Monterey — first published in the Philadelphia North American on December 7, 1846. Garner's 1846–47 letters are among the most vivid and reliable firsthand accounts of California life in the years just before the Gold Rush; Colton himself drew on them for his own Three Years in California (1850). The original envelope makes a fitting presentation for a text that is itself a letter — a charming small-press production with a genuine double appeal: to collectors of Monterey and early-California history, and to the dedicated miniature-book collecting community.

SKU TO-2026-070