Recollections of a Rogue
London: Museum Press, 1957. First UK Edition, First Printing. Hardcover. Octavo. 6.25 x 9.5 in. xxi, 302 pp. Occasionally illustrated with black & white reproductions of Chamberlain's own sketches, including a suite of color reproductions of his drawings. Near fine in original cloth-effect boards, gilt titling to spine, and some slight off-setting to endpapers, as well as a "withdrawn" stamp to rear free endpaper "from free use in city cultural and welfare institutions" and therefore not ex-library with no other withdrawn stamping or institution markings. A very good pictorial dust jacket with some light toning to spine, shallow chipping and a few small closed tears, including a spot of internal tape repair to front cover. Still, a nice copy of this colorful and resounding autobiography. Near fine / Very good. Item #9487
A first UK edition of Chamberlain's vivid bildungsroman-memoir that followed the first US edition only a year after due to its popularity. Originally written between 1855 and 1861, Recollections was discovered in manuscript form in an antique mall in the 1940s and later serialized in Life Magazine prior to publication. Alternatively titled My Confessions, Recollections details Chamberlain's early life and travels with the U.S. army in Mexico and throughout the West, including his time as a soldier fighting in the Mexican-American war, notably at the Battle of Buena Vista, as well as his outlaw adventures as a member of the historic scalp hunter Glanton Gang. This memoir being the only "historical" record of Judge Holden, made infamous as a villain among villains in Cormac McCarthy's bloody Blood Meridian, and described by Chamberlain first-hand as an "encyclopaedian Scalp Hunter" in this colorful biography which itself is no less bloody.
With a foreword by D.W. Brogan and a postscript by editor Roger Butterfield.
Price: $150.00