Scenes and Adventures in the Army

Scenes and Adventures in the Army (Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston, 1857)


Another 1857 first edition of Scenes and Adventures in the Army, NYPL copy, is Google-digitized and accessible online courtesy of HathiTrust Digital Library:
https://hdl.handle.net/2027/nyp.33433007086782

1857 edition via MOA-Michigan 

1859 edition, University of Virginia copy via HathiTrust Digital Library (only the title page is different, updated to show PSGC's recent promotion to Colonel): 

https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uva.x000536920
1859 edition at Library of Congress via HathiTrust Digital Library:
https://hdl.handle.net/2027/loc.ark:/13960/t8df76j3z

"...full of gothic moonlight...and a literary pathos
hard to associate with as hard-bitten an officer as the army had."
--Bernard DeVoto, Year of Decision 1846

Part I reproduces most of the magazine series "Scenes and Adventures in the Army, Sketches of Indians and Life Beyond the Border" which ran in volumes 7 and 8 of the Southern Literary Messenger from June 1842 to February 1843, as follows:

"Scenes and Adventures in the Army, Sketches of Indians, and Life Beyond the Border"
by a Captain of U. States Dragoons 

1. June 1842 
2. July 1842
3. September 1842
4. October 1842
5. November 1842
6. February 1843 

The 1842-43 magazine series "Scenes and Adventures in the Army" in the Southern Literary Messenger is repackaged from even earlier articles in the Army and Navy Chronicle.  In February 1840 the first of four western sketches entitled "Leaves from my Note-Book" appeared in the Army and Navy Chronicle (whose subscribers included the Albany Young Men's Association) over the signature of "Z."  These "Leaves" of "Z" were supplanted in the same journal by "Notes and Reminiscences of an Officer of the Army," signed "F.R.D." for First Regiment Dragoons. Here is how the writer handles the disrupted chronology and troublesome change of pseudonyms at the end of the first installment, June 18, 1840:
Mr. Editor: Was it not unkind of " Z" to anticipate by several years the regular progress of my story? If I tire not by the way,—exposing, perhaps, your readers to that danger,—I shall prove Z to be neither the alpha nor omega of these veritable recollections. Your friend, F. R. D.
Two years later, in 1842-1843 the combined "Leaves" and "Notes" were published after revision in the Southern Literary Messenger. 

Army and Navy Chronicle 10  (January-June 1840)
Army and Navy Chronicle 11 (July-December 1840)



Complicating the publication history of Scenes and Adventures are the interpolated "Indian romances" of Mah-za-pa-mee and Sha-wah-now in the July 1842 Southern Literary Messenger, both of which had previously appeared over the signature of "P.S.G.C." in the Military and Naval Magazine of the United States ("Mah-za-pa-mee" in August 1835; "Sha-wah-now in September 1835).

 MAH-ZA-PA-MEE
A Tale of the Rocky Mountains [SHA-WA-NOW]

Both Indian tales as well as the story of Hugh Glass (a clever rewrite of the widely circulated account by James Hall) were first published in late 1830 and early 1831, as newspaper sketches in the St. Louis Beacon signed "Borderer."
UPDATE:  The tale of Mah-za-pa-mee was reprinted from the St Louis Beacon in the July 1831 issue of the Illinois Monthly Magazine. 


No comments:

Post a Comment