Two Women in the Klondike : the Story of a Journey to the Gold-Fields of Alaska.

New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1899. 8vo, decorative dark gray cloth, titles in gold at front-cover and spine. Frontis., xiv, [2], 485, [3] pp., numerous b&w illus., large (27" x 34") folding map in pocket. Early ownership inscription of “Geo. W. Leadbetter” in ink on endpaper.

First edition. Hitchcock, a New York socialite, and her friend Edith van Buren traveled with their Great Dane Ivan from San Francisco to Alaska by steamer, up the Yukon River by barge, and settled on land outside Dawson. Both women become free miners amid the Gold Rush of 1898, in time constructing the largest house in Dawson Annex. With much on pioneer Alaska, the work includes an account of swindler and conman Soapy Smith, who appears in one of the illustrations laid out in a mourning room with his gun by his side. The map, by Miner Wait Bruce, depicts steamboat routes and trails to the gold fields. Bruce’s book Alaska was reviewed along with Hitchcock’s in the Overland Monthly.

“The author traveled in the summer of 1898 to Dawson via the Yukon River, and returned via Skagway and Sitka. She describes the river valley and its people; the Gold Rush activities in Dawson, Skagway Pass, etc.”—Arctic Bibliography 7125

CONDITION: Very good, lower left corner of front cover bumped, lower left corner of back cover bumped; a clean, tight, attractive copy; folding map fine.