Henry Beston, The Outermost House: life on the great beach of Cape Cod. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran and Co., 1928.
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1st edition; extra-illustrated by the author.
This Cape Cod classic established Beston's reputation as a naturalist and as a writer, and he is among the forebears of the modern environmentalist movement. His writing influenced environmental public policy and inspired others who took up the naturalist cause, most notably Rachel Carson. The copy displayed here was the author's, which he used as a scrapbook for 'The Focastle' (i.e. the 'outermost house'), pasting in photographs and canceled checks ($292.00) that documented his purchase of the property. Beston received an honorary degree from Bowdoin College in 1953.
Gift: Mrs. Henry Beston [Elizabeth Jane Coatsworth].