[Rarebooks] FA: 1854 Adventures in Great American Desert -Mexico

[Joslin Hall Rare Books, ABAA]

“A colossal but most picturesque liar.
   He fibs on a surprising scale"
        -Edgar Allan Poe, on the author

“The Desert Home, or, the Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness.
The English Family Robinson.”  By Captain Mayne Reid, illustrated by
William Harvey.  Published by Ticknor and Fields, Boston: 1854.

Captain Mayne Reid’s popular nineteenth century boys adventure novel “The
Desert Home”; the plot is modeled on "The Swiss Family Robinson" but is
instead set in the Mexican desert!

The mind boggles...

The twelve melodramatic line illustrations by William Harvey, the most
popular and prolific illustrator in the first half of 19th century
England, mostly show scenes of animal savagery. I particularly like the
depiction of an angry opossum hanging from a tree by it’s tail and
spitting viciously at an alarmed oriole defending her nest.

THE AUTHOR: An Irishman by birth, Mayne Reid emigrated to the U.S. in 1840
and after various adventures in the West, served as a lieutenant in the
Mexican War. On his return to England, he used his experiences in America
as a basis for his popular boys’ adventure stories.

Edgar Allen Poe wrote of his friend Reid-

“a colossal but most picturesque liar. He fibs on a surprising scale but
with the finish of an artist, and that is why I listen to him
attentively.”.

This quality becomes obvious in the opening of “The Desert Home” in which
“the great American Desert” is described as “a desert twenty-five times as
big as all England!”. But, his fact stretching put him in good stead with
his adolescent male fans which included a young Teddy Roosevelt.

THE ILLUSTRATOR: William Harvey was both a wood engraver and an
illustrator. He was apprenticed first to Thomas Berwick in Newcastle where
he was born and became one of the first to use outside engravers to speed
up his work. His elegant "mannered" style, almost entirely devoid of
humor, eventually went out of fashion. Nevertheless, it is Harvey who must
receive the credit of having revolutionized early 19th century English
book illustration.

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