This collection consists of an extra-illustrated set of the The Writings of John Muir : Manuscript Edition (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1916-1924), which includes 260 platinum prints chiefly by photographer Herbert W. Gleason (1855-1937) and ten manuscript fragments in John Muir's hand from a draft of his work, The Mountains of California.

John Muir (1838-1914) was a naturalist, conservationist, and author. His published works include: The Mountains of California, Our National Parks, The Yosemite, and My First Summer in the Sierra. Herbert Wendell Gleason (1855-1937) was a photographer, naturalist, and lecturer. Gleason was born in Malden, Massachusetts, and, between 1883 and 1899, spent sixteen years in Minnesota as a Congregational minister and editor of the Northwest Congregationalist (retitled The Kingdom in 1894) before returning to Massachusetts, where he began photographing sites related to the naturalist writer Henry David Thoreau. In 1903, the Houghton Mifflin Company approached Gleason to illustrate a forthcoming edition of Thoreau's collected works using Gleason's photographs as photogravures. In subsequent years, Gleason's photographs would later be used to illustrate deluxe editions of the collected writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Muir, and others. Gleason spent many summers photographing the mountain regions and national parks of the American West and had a friendship with Muir.

10 volumes

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