Anybody's Gold; The Story of California's Mining Towns

New York: D. Appleton-Century Company Incorporated, 1941. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Good/Good. E. H. Suydam. xiv, 467, [3] pages. Illustrated endpapers. Maps. Illustrations. Reading List. Index. DJ worn, torn, soiled and chipped in a plastic sleeve. Signed and dated by the author on the half-title page. The Joseph Henry Jackson Award is a literary award offered annually to promising young California writers. The award is a memorial to Joseph Henry Jackson, longtime literary editor of the San Francisco Chronicle. Jackson was described as "the greatest bookman west if the Mississippi," and, as Anthony Boucher noted, the only disputed part of the description was its geographical limitation. The award was established after his death in 1955. An illustrator, etcher, lithographer, and block printer, E. H. Suydam studied at the Philadelphia Museum's School of Industrial Art with celebrated illustrator Thornton Oakley. Suydam was a member of Philadelphia's Water Color, Print, and Sketch Clubs, as well as the New York Society of Illustrators. He died in 1940. The dramatic story of the Gold Rush years--and especially of the clerks, farmers, bandits, entrepreneurs, cons, dance hall girls, and "good women" who came to find their fortunes. Drawing on personal knowledge of the area, publications of the period, and unpublished personal diaries, the late Jackson compiled a vivid narrative that recreates the excitement of California's most dramatic decade.