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Mitchell, S. Weir : Westways: A Village Chronicle

The Century Company, New York, 1913

Original publisher's green cloth binding with gilt lettering and decorations on front cover and spine. 5 1/2" x 7 3/4." 510 pages, complete. Pages and covers are very clean and intact. Binding is tight. Referenced in the Bibliography of American Literature (BAL) as no. 14272. Silas Weir Mitchell (1829-1914) was an American physician and writer who is credited with discovering causalgia (complex regional pain syndrome) and erythromelalgia (a vascular pain disorder). Excerpt from the Preface: "Long before the Civil War there were in the middle states, near to or remote from great centres, villages where the social division of classes was tacitly accepted. In or near these towns one or more families were continuously important on account of wealth or because of historic position, generations of social training, and constant relation to the larger world. They came by degrees to constitute what I may describe as an indistinct caste, for a long time accepted as such by their less fortune-favoured neighbors. They were, in fact, for many years almost as much a class by themselves as are the long-seated county families of England and like these were looked to for helpful aid in sickness and in other of the calamities of life. The democrat time, increasing ease of travel and the growth of large industries, gradually altered the relation between these small communities, and the families who in the smaller matters of life remained singularly familiar with their poorer neighbours and in the way of closer social intimacies far apart. It seemed to me worth while to use the life of one of these groups of people as the background of a story which also deals with influence of politics and war on all classes.". Book. Book Condition: Very Good. Binding: Hardcover

1st Edition

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