Mercer's Belles: The Journal of a Reporter
Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1960. Dianne Weiss. First Edition. Hardcover with Dust Jacket. 8vo. Pp. xiii, 190. Foreword by Herman J. Deutsch. Illustrated endpapers and eight plates. Notes, bibliography, index. Light blue cloth, titles and decorations in dark blue on the cover and spine: spine ends rubbed. In the illustrated dust jacket with price intact on front flap: light soiling and dampstain. Near Fine / Very Good+. Item #5996 Following that preposterous gambit, Mercer served as the first president of the University of Washington before decamping for life as a journalist in Wyoming. While there, he published the sought-after The Banditti of the Plains (1894), an account that indicted the ranching barons of Wyoming as rapacious, even resorting to murder, to protect their interests. The book was suppressed by those interests, with (purportedly) the copy in the Wyoming State Library missing to this day. In a brazen act of intimidation, Mercer's newspaper office was torched by arson. Dust jacket preserved in a removable, clear archival sleeve.
The shipboard diary of a New York Times reporter who accompanied Asa Mercer and the husband-seeking Boston women bound for pioneer Seattle in 1866.
Price: $20.00