Historical and Biographical Record of the Cattle Industry and the Cattlemen of Texas and Adjacent Territory

First Edition. 743 pp. Illustrated with b&w plates (color frontispiece not present, but unclear if it was issued with all copies). Folio, (12¼x9"), full brown leather stamped blind and in gilt, all edges marbled. Expertly rebacked with original spine laid down; lacking frontispiece, pages remarkably clean, with just a few pages with light soiling; very good or better. Inscribed by George W. Conover, whose biography is featured on pp. 661-62. Key text on the history of the cattle industry: "One of the 'big four' cattle books... no collector's library would be complete without it..." - Adams. Adams calls the 1895 first edition "very rare," and notes that nearly all of that edition was lost in a warehouse fire. Jenkins notes that the work was first "conceived as a mug book to be sold primarily to the people whose biographies appeared in it, the final published book contained so much of value on the cattle industry that it has become a classic in its field." This copy is a prime example of the vanity appeal Jenkins wrote about. Still, this work includes considerable information about the development of the cattle industry. In addition to many illustrations on cattle, and the industry, this work provides a ten year history on cattle processing and values (see page 231). Adams Herd 593, Howes C820; Jenkins 34.