Macgregor Alpine 1882 (1 results)

Card Covers. First printing. pp. 16. 12mo., measuring 7" x 5". Tan card covers held with red silk ribbon binding. Black and white map frontispiece entitled: "Sioux Lookout; The HUB of Northwestern Ontario's Goldfields!, The Land of Romance, Adventure, and untold Wealth!". No detectable flaws, contents bright, clean, and unmarked with tight, sound binding; fine. Exceedingly scarce with no known printed copies of this poem or any publications by the early Red Lake (Ontario) solider, poet, and newspaper publisher Robert Alpine MacGregor. At time of cataloguing there are no known copies of any of his works housed at Library & Archives Canada, University of Toronto, Ontario Archives, McGill University. Rare indeed. From the preface: "The Patricia Herald audaciously but wholly devoid of egotism launches out from its antiquated machinery a limited number of booklets embodying certain pieces of its front page verse. The type varies as there is not enough of one sort to go round. Naturally the booklet is unique in appearance, structure, and content. At any rate it is the first batch of verse ever printed in the tall timbers of Northern Canada, for Sioux Lookout is not yet a city, not a big town, but just a wee place from the "maddening crowd". In an age of high cost of living, a copy of the first issue ---The Muskeg Edition---is almost prohibitive in price---Fifty Cents.".