Description
Biobooks, Published 1954. Hardcover, xiii, 96 pp.; 24 cm; First California Edition, one of five hundred copies printed at the Abbey Press, Oakland, by Ben Kennedy and William R. Morrison; illustrated with a portrait plate and facsimiles.
Rare, out-of-print & unusual books · Since 1997
112
Turn the pages with the arrows, keyboard, or a swipe.
Catalog notes
Condition & notes
In Very Good condition, no dust jacket. Copper foil paper over boards with green textured cloth spine, faded gilt lettering on spine. Mild shelf and edge wear, with a hint of color loss at corner tips and a small chip to the copper paper at a corner tip of the rear board. Binding tight. Light toning to edges of text block. Otherwise unmarked. Massett (1819-1898) gave what is generally considered the first public entertainment in San Francisco, a one-man show at the schoolhouse on Portsmouth Square on 22 June 1849, playing dramatic roles, reciting, and singing his own songs to an audience of about two hundred who paid three dollars each; his accompanist worked at a piano lent by the Collector of the Port. He wrote as "Jeems Pipes of Pipesville" and edited the Marysville Herald. Joseph A. Sullivan drew this text from Massett's 1863 autobiography Drifting About for his California Relations series, whose print blocks now sit with the Biobooks papers at UCLA. Facsimiles reproduce Massett's sheet music from San Francisco and New York publishers, a letter from J. A. Sutter dated Nicolaus, 26 February 1851, and the programme for his farewell concert at the Adelphi Theatre, 23 February 1852.