Mount Desert on the Coast of Maine. “Infinite Riches in a Little Room.” [Cover title: Guide Book for Mount Desert].

Portland: Loring, Short & Harmon; Boston: Houghton, Osgood and Company, 1885. 12mo (7.25” x 5”), green cloth, title and borders in black. Frontis, [11], 5 mounted half-stereoview photographs, including frontis., 1 folded engraved map (18” x 14”) in lower cover pocket.

Sixth edition. First issued in 1867, this fine guide-book went through six editions, only four of which (the third through the sixth) were illustrated with photographs. The five images in this sixth edition are different from those that appear in the other photographically illustrated editions. The photographs are large half stereoviews, and while no credit is given to the photographer, they are known to be the work of Bryant Bradley (1838–1890), originally from Cornish, Maine, who lived and worked in Bar Harbor in the 1870s and ‘80s. Bradley's work is generally of high quality and the present images are no exception. The views included herein, by title, are as follows: Spouting Horn; Eagle Lake; Cathedral Rock; Otter Cliffs; and Somes’ Sound,—West Shore. Also included in this volume is a crisply engraved folding map entitled “Mt. Desert Island Maine.”

Clara Barnes Martin of Portland, Maine was a respected figure in literary circles of the day who was fluent in Russian and regularly reviewed Continental literature for the New York Evening Post.

REFERENCES: Williamson 6316; Thompson, Edward V. Important Maine Maps, Books, Prints and Ephemera (Orono, 2003) 292.

CONDITION: Good, light whitish dampstain to upper right corner of front cover, a few light spots to back cover lacking front free endpaper, frontis. partially separated at hinge; map crisp and very good.