MCDONALD OF OREGON : A TALE OF TWO SHORES; Illiustrated by Walter J. Enright by Dye, Eva Emery - 1906

Chicago, IL: A.C. McClurg & Co, 1906. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. Octavo, 8.1 in. x 5.6 in., pp. 395, [2], [4] (advertising). Ivy green cloth boards with black title and black, gilt and white oval sunrise scene stamped to front. Black title to spine. Light rubbing to extremities. Bottom corners bumped. Previous owner's ink inscription to front free endpaper. As an impressionable and imaginative girl growing up in Illinois, Eva Emery pored over every historical novel written by Sir Walter Scott. Within the pages of Waverley, Rob Roy, and Ivanhoe, she found an inspiring concoction of chivalry, adventure, romance, and cross-cultural conflict. Later, as a student at Oberlin College in the 1870s, she delighted in the epic poetry and literature of Homer and Hesiod. These works—as well as those of Irving, Longfellow, Carlyle, Emerson, and Fuller—would encourage the talented and exuberant writer to compose what she believed were America's epic stories: the contested settlement of the Northwest Coast in the 1820s, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and the Overland Trail migrations. Pioneering the genre of historical fiction in the Pacific Northwest, Dye adopted a style that was a curious blend of fact, fiction, biography, and romance.... Dye published two works of romantic fiction: McDonald of Oregon: A Tale of Two Shores (1906) and The Soul of America: An Oregon Iliad (1934). (from Oregon Encyclopedia).