135.     [CIVIL WAR]. WEST, John C[amden]. A Texan in Search of a Fight. Being the Diary and Letters of a Private Soldier in Hood’s Texas Brigade. By John C. West, Company E, Fourth Texas. Waco: Press of J.S. Hill & Co., 1901. [1-7] 8-189 [1, blank], [2] pp. + tipped-in ephemera: poetry leaflet by Decca Lamar West (2 pp.), prospectus with portrait of author tipped to title page (4 pp.), testimonial with portrait of author’s wife, Mary Eliza West (8 pp.). 12mo (19.5 x 13.5 cm), original brown printed cloth wrappers lettered in black on upper wrap, stapled (as issued). Light wear to fragile wraps, title detached and lightly chipped along right blank margin, paper browned due to its poor quality, otherwise very fine, with author’s signed presentation inscription to Corporal James Tanner. Very scarce.

     First edition. Coulter, Travels in the Confederate States 469: “A diary kept by West…with various letters written during his term of service…. He reached his unit [Hood’s Texas Brigade] on the Rapidan shortly before Gettysburg, in which he took part. Returning to Virginia, he joined Bragg’s army around Chattanooga…. After fighting at Chickamauga, he went into East Tennessee with Longstreet.” Howes W278. Nevins, Civil War Books I:176: “Among the best personal accounts of life in Hood’s famous Brigade.” Parrish, Civil War Texana 103.

     West (1834-1927), a South Carolinian, came to Texas in 1855. After serving in the Civil War, he resumed the practice of law in Waco. See Handbook of Texas Online: John Camden West.

($200-400)

Auction 22 Abstracts