THE WILDERNESS HUNTER. AN ACCOUNT OF THE BIG GAME OF THE UNITED STATES AND ITS CHASE WITH HORSE HOUND, AND RIFLE Inscribed to the Best American He Ever Knew

New York & London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, (1893). First Edition. Hardcover. Covers soiled and marked, tight. Spine darkened, gilt still strong, with some chipping at the spine tips. Good or better and an Association Copy of the first order. A. B. Frost, Henry Sandham, J. Carter Beard, Frederick Remington, and Harry Eaton. Small quarto (6" x 9-1/4") in the original gilt-decorated cream cloth with brown lettering on the front cover; xvi, 472 pages. Illustrated with a frontispiece plate, drawings at the chapter heads and tails, and 23 full-page plates by A. B. Frost, Henry Sandham, J. Carter Beard, Frederick Remington, and Harry Eaton. This trade edition preceded the limited edition of 200 copies, per a "Notice" that is tipped in before the frontispiece announcing that the limited edition is in preparation. A monumental Association Copy INSCRIBED and SIGNED by the author on the front endpaper: "To my beloved friend,/Jacob A. Riis;/may you enjoy the/northwoods as much as I/enjoyed the great plains/& the Rockies!/Theodore Roosevelt/July 1901." The number "14" has been inserted after the word "July," possibly by Roosevelt. Laid in is a pass made out to Riis for a Roosevelt Reception aboard the U.S. Revenue Steamer Androscoggin on 18 June 1910. Of Jacob Riis, his lifelong friend, Roosevelt remarked in his AUTOBIOGRAPHY: "I am tempted to call [him] the best American I ever knew." In 1904 Riis published a biography of his good friend titled THEODORE ROOSEVELT: THE CITIZEN.

Jacob Riis, among the most dedicated advocates for America's oppressed and downtrodden, arrived in New York from his native Denmark at the age of 21 in 1870. A pioneer in photojournalism, Riis photographed and wrote about the slums and tenements of a New York in the dawn of a new century. Riis came to Roosevelt's attention through his 1890 book HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES. As Commissioner of the New York City Police Department, Roosevelt accompanied Riis on his evening travels through the slums and witnessed firsthand the inhumane conditions endured by many of New York's inhabitants. In his 1901 book MAKING OF AN AMERICAN, Riis wrote of Roosevelt: "It could not have been long after I wrote HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES that he came to the Evening Sun office one day looking for me. I was out and he left his card merely writing on the back of it that he had read my book and had 'come to help'. That was all, and it tells the whole story of the man. I loved him from the day I first saw him; nor ever in all the years that have passed has he failed of the promise made then. No one ever helped as he did. For two years, we were brothers on Mulberry Street." Roosevelt, in turn, wrote of Riis after his death: "It is difficult for me to write of Jacob Riis only from the public standpoint. He was one of my truest and closest friends. I have ever prized the fact that once, in speaking of me, he said, 'since I met him he has been my brother.' I have not only admired and respected him beyond measure, but I have loved him dearly ... and I mourn him as if he were one of my own family."