Rare Book Monthly
Book Catalogue Reviews - November - 2007 Issue
The Latest Acquisitions at John Michael Lang Fine Books
Naturalist and author John Keast Lord.
Skipping across some 3,000-plus miles of interior Canada, we come to The Naturalist in Vancouver Island and British Columbia. This is a two-volume 1866 first edition by John Keast Lord. Lord was a naturalist who served on the British North American Boundary Commission from 1858-1862. The Commission's job was to survey the final border between the U.S. and Canada, but Lord was primarily interested in reporting on the natural life and natives of this area. At one point he writes of the enormous migration of salmon up the rivers, their numbers so thick they would push each other onto the streambeds as they made their way upstream. The poor Indians who lived in the area may have had little else, but were never wanting for salmon. Item 26. $450.
Item 28 is a copy of Andre Norton's The X factor, published in 1965. Lang describes the story as, "Another classic space tale, this one involving a fugitive mutant and his ability to communicate telepathically with animals on a strange planet." We believe this to be a work of fiction. $75.
Item 19 is a 1956 first edition of Lerner and Loewe's popular play My Fair Lady. Based on George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion," My Fair Lady became one of the most successful musicals ever on Broadway. With a little bit of luck, and $125, this copy is yours.
John Michael Lang Fine Books may be visited online at www.jmlbooks.com, or reached by telephone at 206-624-4100.
