The Awakening Of The Desert [Signed And Inscribed By Birge To Cousin] Julius C. Birge First Editions,Travel / Exploration,Western Americana

Boston: Richard G. Badger / The Gorham Press, 1912. First Edition. Octavo; 429 pp. Black and white photographs and illustrations, complete. Publisher's red cloth with gilt lettering. Front map endpapers. No dust jacket. Boards scuffed and worn along edges, with exposure at corners and ends of joints; spine faded and soiled with a vertical crease down center; dampstaining to cloth at front fore-edge and fading to rear board. Rear hinge cracking. Small closed tear to half title. Stamp of Olets Bookstore to front free endpaper and pencil ownership signature of Mrs. Drewatt in pencil on frontis recto. Large section of rear free endpaper torn away, presumably removing another inscription. A couple pages stained in margins, else free of marks. Opens easily between gatherings but binding is holding. Signed by the author to his cousin below the frontis with inscription "To Mrs. Minnie Birge Drewatt, With love and best wishes of her cousin, Julius C. Birge. St. Louis, April 1919." Birge's account of his overland trip from Whitewater, Wisconsin to Salt Lake City, Utah, described by Graff as "a fine first hand narrative." [Howes B463; Graff 299].