Captain Gray's Company; Or, Crossing the Plains and Living in Oregon.
The First Novel By A Pioneering Feminist
Duniway, Mrs. Abigail J. Captain Gray’s Company; Or, Crossing the Plains and Living in Oregon. Portland, Oregon: Printed and Published by S.J. McCormick, 1859.
8vo.; few pages lightly faded, foxed; a few blank margins repaired, one with the loss of several letters in a running head; later half morocco, hinges repaired; else an excellent copy of a fragile book. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
First edition of Duniway’s first book—written before she was 25—and only the second literary work written and printed in Oregon: Streeter Sale 3378; Howes D568; Belnap 419; Wagner-Camp 323.
Belnap calls it “a novel of immigrant hardships and of trials and satisfactions of pioneer life in Oregon. It has heavy didactic overtones reflecting Mrs. Duniway’s concern with causes ranging from the evils of mercurial medicines to the plight of women” (Belnap).
Abigail Jane Duniway (1834-1915), born in Groveland, Illinois, was educated at home and shaped by her early experiences of the harsh challenges of pioneering. Captain Gray’s Company narrates, through journal entries, a woman’s 1950 overland trip that Duniway drew from her own family’s 1852 transcontinental trek, during which her mother died of cholera. Duniway’s works stress the hardships imposed on pioneer women by the lack of freedom and pleasure afforded her. Duniway’s second and final novel, From the West to the West (1905), elaborated on these somber themes.
Duniway dedicated both her writing and her long life to overtly feminist causes. In 1870 she formed the State Equal Suffrage Association; the following year she founded the suffragist newspaper The New Northwest, to which she contributed editorials and general news stories. (Issues of that journal are virtually unprocurable.) In 1871 she launched a career in public speaking and toured the country with Susan B. Anthony, lobbying for woman’s suffrage. Duniway’s autobiography, Path Breaking, was published in 1914; it concludes with a rigorous feminist message: “...The young college women of today...should remember that every inch of this freedom was bought for them at a great price...The debt that each generation owes to the past, it must pay to the future...”
A painfully scarce book. The last recorded instance of a copy appearing for sale was in the Streeter Collection (lot 3378), sold at Parke-Bernet on April 12, 1964. That copy (sold for $575) was dilapidated and worn, but the auctioneers nevertheless devoted an entire page to reproducing its title page.
(#4636)
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