Thomas Josiah Dimsdale, 1866

MONTANA – DIMSDALE, Thomas Josiah (1831-1866). The Vigilantes of Montana, or Popular Justice in the Rocky Mountains. Virginia City, Montana: Montana Post Press, 1866.

First edition of "not only the first, but textually the most important, book ever printed in Montana" (Howes). Dimsdale was an English graduate of Oxford University who settled in Virginia City, Montana, where he taught music, acted as the superintendent of education, collected material on outlaws, and edited the Montana Post, where the Vigilantes was first serialized. Dimsdale's book is a detailed account of the Montana Vigilante wars, touched off by a lawless "sheriff," Henry Plummer, who was tried and summarily hung, along with some twenty of his armed band. It was published shortly before Dimsdale succumbed to tuberculosis and notably served as a source for Samuel Langhorne Clemens's Roughing It (1872)—Clemens quoted more than 2,300 words from Dimsdale. Howes D-345; Rasmussen Critical Companion to Mark Twain, p. 670.

Octavo (166 x 120mm). 4 pp. of ads at rear. (Small loss to lower corner of title page and last leaf of ads, very faint dampstain to second half of the book). Modern cloth (rebound, a little wear at extremities). Provenance: "Dr Frary, Pasadena, California" (ownership inscription) – M.G. Root (ownership inscription).