History of the Donner Party

1879. MCGLASHAN, Charles F. History of the Donner Party. A Tragedy of the Sierras. Truckee, Ca.: Published by Crowley and McGlashan, [1879]. 193pp. 20th-century black cloth, spine gilt. Spine sunned, light shelf wear. Scattered tanning and soiling, bookplate on front pastedown. Very good overall. ZAMORANO 80, 53. HOWES M102, "b." GRAFF 2610. RADER 2295. MINTZ 318. COWAN, p.406. HOWELL 50:627. LIBROS CALIFORNIANOS, p.68. REESE, BEST OF THE WEST 193. One of the best published works on the Donner Party ordeal, often reprinted throughout the subsequent decades. The author, editor of the TRUCKEE REPUBLICAN, had access to the manuscript records and letters of some of the survivors, as well as the diary of Patrick Breen, and was able to assemble a most trustworthy account of the journey, and its dissolution into cannibalism and tragedy. It is still regarded as one of the indispensable accounts of the Donner Party. "Long regarded as the definitive treatise on the subject. The book has gone through many editions, virtually unchanged, and remains today an essential item for the student of the California story" - LIBROS CALIFORNIANOS. This first edition, printed in Truckee, a town very near the scene of the event, was followed in 1880 by an edition published by A.L. Bancroft in San Francisco, in which McGlashan deleted or revised passages that disturbed Donner Party survivors. Rare.