{"id":1372,"date":"2013-08-07T15:37:38","date_gmt":"2013-08-07T15:37:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/?p=1372"},"modified":"2014-02-13T16:53:21","modified_gmt":"2014-02-13T16:53:21","slug":"sought-in-vain-for-an-eastern-publisher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/2013\/08\/07\/sought-in-vain-for-an-eastern-publisher\/","title":{"rendered":"Sought in vain for &#8220;an Eastern publisher&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/files\/2013\/08\/img768.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-1373\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/files\/2013\/08\/img768-300x214.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"214\" srcset=\"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/files\/2013\/08\/img768-300x214.jpg 300w, http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/files\/2013\/08\/img768-1024x732.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>We recently acquired a travel narrative of the Ohio River issued with this fabulous cover, written by <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Reuben_Gold_Thwaites\">Reuben Gold Thwaites<\/a>, a Massachussets native who moved to Wisconsin in 1866 and became the director of the state historical society, as well as a noted historian (famously editing the monumental, 73-volume <a href=\"http:\/\/ctwweb.wesleyan.edu:7002\/vwebv\/holdingsInfo?bibId=558210\">Jesuit Relations<\/a>, relating to their missions to the natives of North America).<\/p>\n<p>In January of 1895 this book, <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wisconsinhistory.org\/whi\/feature\/thwaites\/\">Afloat on the Ohio<\/a>, <\/em>was in manuscript, and he was shopping around for a publisher.\u00a0 We have two letters from Thwaites in our <a href=\"http:\/\/illiad.trincoll.edu\/watk\/manuscripts\/RobertsBrothersCollectionInventory.htm\">Robert&#8217;s Brothers collection<\/a>, the first of which, dated 18 January 1895, addressed to Messrs. Roberts Brothers, begins:<\/p>\n<p>Gentlemen: I am sending you today, prepaid, by American Express, the MS of a new book I have just completed&#8211;&#8220;Afloat on the Ohio.&#8221;\u00a0 My other two books built on the same lines&#8211;&#8220;Historic Waterways&#8221; [1888] and &#8220;Our Cycling Tour in England&#8221; [1892] were published by Messrs. McClurg &amp; Co., Chicago; but I thought it best to secure for this one, in particular, an Eastern publisher.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/files\/2013\/08\/img769.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-1375\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/files\/2013\/08\/img769-188x300.jpg\" width=\"188\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/files\/2013\/08\/img769-188x300.jpg 188w, http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/files\/2013\/08\/img769-642x1024.jpg 642w, http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/files\/2013\/08\/img769.jpg 1746w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 188px) 100vw, 188px\" \/><\/a>Later he suggests a marketing strategy, predicting that &#8220;it might have a steady sale to tourists taking the annual summer steamboat tour down the Ohio&#8211;and thousands do this. Then again, in the Ohio Valley states I should suppose that there might be some demand on the part of teachers, as extra reading in connection with instruction in history and geography.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Roberts Brothers apparently did not agree, for they sent no reply to Thwaites for several weeks, which spurred him to write our second letter, dated 1 March 1895, asking them for an answer to his first.\u00a0 Eventually, he evidently gave up and the book was published by another Chicago firm, Way &amp; Williams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We recently acquired a travel narrative of the Ohio River issued with this fabulous cover, written by Reuben Gold Thwaites, a Massachussets native who moved to Wisconsin in 1866 and became the director of the state historical society, as well as a noted historian (famously editing the monumental, 73-volume Jesuit Relations, relating to their missions [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[36,5,22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1372"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1372"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1523,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1372\/revisions\/1523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}