Creator
John Muir
Recipient
[Walter H.] Page
Transcription
50/ Six/ Martinez, Cal. Jan. 10, 1902
Big thanks my dear Page for your great letter. The strength & shove & hearty reinging inspiration of it is enough to make the very trees & rocks write. The Park book, the publishers tell me is successful. To you & Sargent it owes its existence; for before I got your urgent & encouraging letters I never dreamed of writing such a book. As to plans for others i am now at work on 1 a small one "Yosemite I other Yosemites" which Johnson has been trying to get me to write a long time & which I hope to get off my hands this year. I'll first offer it to the Century Co. hoping they will bring it out in good shape, give it a good push toward readers & offer fair compensation. Johnson is all right, a very friend of mine, but his
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company did not do half as well by me & "the mountains" as I think the should. & I'm not bound to give them this or any other book I may write on their own terms. 2 The California Tree & shrub book was suggested by Merriam last summer, but I have already written so fully on forest trees & their underbrush I'm not sure that I can make another book about them Possibly a handy volume with short telling descriptions & illustrations of each species enabling the ordinary observer to know them at sight might be welcomed. This if undertaken will probably be done season after next, & you shall have the first sight of it. 3 Next should come a Mountaineering book - all about walking, climbing & camping, with a lot of illustrative excursions. 4 Alaska,- glaciers, forests, mt'ns travels etc.
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5 A book of studies - the action of landscape - making forces - earth sculpture - distribution of plants & animals etc - My main real book in which I'll have to ask my readers to cerebrate Still I hope it maybe made readable to a good many. 6 Possibly my autobiography which for ten years or more all sorts of people have been begging me to write. My life however has been so smooth & regular & reasonable, so free from blundering exciting adventures the story seems hardly worth while in the midst of so much that is infinitely more important. Still if I should live long enough I may be tempted to try it for I begin to see that such a book would offer fair opportunities here & there to say a good word for God. The Harriman Alaska book is superb & I gladly congratulate you on the job. In none of the reviews I have seen does Dr Merriam
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get half the credit due him as Editor. Hearty thanks for the two Mowbray volumes I've read them every word, the more of such nature books the better. Good luck to you, may your shop grow like a Sequoia & may I meet you with all your family on this side the continent amid its best beauty Ever faithfully yours
John Muir
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Location
Martinez, Calif.
Date Original
1902 Jan 10
Source
Original letter dimensions: 27.5 x 21 cm.
Recommended Citation
Muir, John, "Letter from John Muir to [Walter H.] Page, 1902 Jan 10." (1902). John Muir Correspondence (PDFs). 4569.
https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/muir-correspondence/4569
Resource Identifier
muir12_0079-let.tif
File Identifier
Reel 12, Image 0079
Collection Identifier
Online finding aid for the microform version of the John Muir Correspondence http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt0w1031nc
Copyright Status
Copyrighted
Copyright Statement
The unpublished works of John Muir are copyrighted by the Muir-Hanna Trust. To purchase copies of images and/or obtain permission to publish or exhibit them, see http://www.pacific.edu/Library/Find/Holt-Atherton-Special-Collections/Fees-and-Forms-.html
Owning Institution
Holt-Atherton Special Collections, University of the Pacific Library. Please contact this institution directly to obtain copies of the images or permission to publish or use them beyond educational purposes.
Copyright Holder
Muir-Hanna Trust
Copyright Date
1984
Pages
4 pages
Keywords
Environmentalist, naturalist, travel, conservation, national parks, John Muir, Yosemite, California, history, correspondence, letters
