LOS ANGELES CITY AND COUNTY DIRECTORY FOR 1883-4. Containing a Complete List of Names, Places of Business and Residences of All Adult Citizens

Los Angeles: Atwood & Ferguson, 1883. Hardcover. Good. A rare survivor, not in Quebedeaux, this early directory was published just two years after the Los Angeles Times began publication and a year prior to the arrival of cultural crusader Charles F. Lummis following his famous tramp across the continent. It also precedes the mid-1880s boom that initiated the transformation of the small town of just over 11,000 people (or about 33,000 countywide) into a thriving metropolis. Numerous notable residents are listed, including Horace Bell, author of Reminiscences of a Ranger (1881), and Elizabeth A. Follansbee, Southern California's first female physican. Aspects of the city's cultural diversity are evident as well, either overtly with individuals identified as "colored" or in the case of the Asian American population, by omission. Notably, the directory includes an advertisement for F.H. Rogers' Solar Art Gallery at 624 San Fernando Street which features an original albumen photograph.

Octavo: [352] p. with numerous advertisements. Original printed paper-covered boards over a brown cloth spine with gilt titles. Some occasional smudging, with a tiny stain to the fore-edge. The ink stamp of Leon F. Moss, a Los Angeles attorney and former judge of the Los Angeles Superior Court, appears on the front pastedown and both the front and rear panel. Some general shelfwear and toning to the boards, with a bit of scuffing and soiling to the front panel, and loss of the gilt stamping along the spine. Housed in custom clamshell box with marbled paper lining and a gilt-stamped green morocco spine label. Scarce, OCLC locates only five holdings: Azusa Pacific University, Fresno County Free Library, San Joaquin Valley Library, Santa Rosa Junior College, and the University of California, Los Angeles.