Sullivan, May Kellogg. The Trail of a Sourdough: Life in Alaska. Boston: Richard G. Badger, The Gorham Press, 1910. First Edition. [9275]
Green pictorial cloth, binding with some blemishes otherwise very good, 7 1/2 x 5 1/4 inches, contemporary owner's signature & place on the ffep, rear free end paper scuffed (looks like an address or other label was removed). 258 clean pp., several drawings as plates, frontispiece illustration by C. A. McArthur of Nome, Alaska. Good. Hardcover.
May Lydia Kellogg Sullivan (1859-1950) b. Albany, WI; d. Seward, Alaska. She married the Rev. Frank Lewis Sullivan in 1886. She made two trips through Alaska to visit her father and brother in Dawson City in 1899. She traveled over twelve thousand miles in eighteen months, practically alone, and wrote of her travels in her first book, A Woman Who Went to Alaska. This vivid and entrancing account was wildly successful, and went through thirteen thousand copies in the first few years after its publication, and is still in print today. See Kurutz, The Klondike & Alaska Gold Rushes, no. 555.
The book we offer here, The Trail of a Sourdough: Life in Alaska, is her second book, a collection of stories based upon her Alaskan experiences. By 1910, she had taken seven trips in Alaska over ten years. The titles are, The Miner's Reasons, Under the Tundra, The Hidden Ledge, A New Klondyke, Estella the Eskimo, Why Midas Failed, The Old Stone House, A Miner's Own Story, and Eyllen's Water Witch.