A Bird Lover in the West

Houghton Mifflin Co, Boston, 1894. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good/No Jacket. The uncommon or scarce first edition, green boards with gilt lettering. Studies of birds in the West as we understand it now (Utah, Colorado), and in the Midwest (Ohio), which as Miller writes in her brief foreword, is "West only relatively to New England and New York, where most of my studies have been made." Harriet Mann Miller (writing under the nom de plume of Olive Thorne Miller) was one of the first three women accepted (in 1901) into the American Ornithologists Union, the others being Mabel Osgood Wright and Florence Merriam Bailey, and like them she was a pioneering woman writing about the environment, publishing articles in prominent venues like Harper's Weekly, The Atlantic, and the Chicago Tribune; chapters in this particular book had appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, the Independent, and Harper's Bazar. Ultimately Miller wrote an estimated 780 articles and 24 complete books, and in particular she wrote prolifically about birds. A very good book with a slanted spine and light wear to corners and spine ends. Library stamp for the Christian Union Sunday School, Rockford, Illinois, on the front pastedown and an 1896 gift inscription by B.R. Waldo to that school on the third blank. Slight edge loss to upper corner of first 20 pages. // Wood (+) River (=) Books specializes in ecology, natural history, nature writing, the environment, and environmental literature, with a special passion for association copies and notable inscriptions.