In Miner's Mirage-Land.
Inscribed
[Printing] Strobridge, Idah Meacham. In Miner’s Mirage-land. Los Angeles: Baumgardt Publishing,1904.
8vo.; frontispiece “Mirage in the Desert” after Frank. P. Sauerwen; brown wrappers; few chips to yap edges, front joint starting to split.
First edition, one of 1000 copies, numbered and signed, of this volume with a cover design and chapter decorations by J. Duncan Gleason and a foreword by Mary Austin. A presentation copy, inscribed to the artist Olga Epstein: With 248 wishes for some beautiful thing to happen to her during the remainder of 1905. Idah Meacham Strobridge, January the seventeenth. With Epstein’s bookplate as well as one of the Edith Rogers Powers Memorial Room. Miner’s Mirage-land is the first (and probably the best) of Strobridge’s trio of books. It consists of sketches and stories of the desert. “[Strobridge’s works and bindery] represent the beginnings of fine book production in Los Angeles, in which content, format, and illustrations join harmoniously” (Heart of the Southwest). “The book offers delightful reading... merits a conspicuous position in any desert collections” (Edwards). Strobridge was born in the Bay area, educated at Mills College and lived in the Pasadena art colony of the Arroyo Seco. Her three books, all privately issued from her bindery, are stories of the life of a woman settler on the desert. They were issued in wrappers or hand bound by her. Franklin Walker (LHSC) writes that she was probably the first author to capitalize ‘The Desert.’ Strobridge’s modest, quiet stories reached only a small public, for they appeared in book form only in the limited editions from her bindery, where she herself assembled the sheets.” Baird & Greenwood 2379. Edwards, Enduring Desert, p.232. Paher 1900: “A desert classic.”
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