Claims and Speculations: Mining and Writing in the Gilded Age

Acknowledgments

xi Acknowledgments Y / This project began with my interest in the mining fictions of Mary Hallock Foote, and I would like to thank Paul and Marian Brewin for feeding that interest with questions and gifts of editions of Foote’s work. I am very glad that Marian was able, before she died, to listen to some of this outcome of her inquiring spirit. I want to acknowledge the wealth of assistance I have received in the writing of this book: encouragement from colleagues in the American Studies Department at King’s College London, as well as funding from the College’s School of Arts and Humanities; great patience on the part of the staff at the British Library and the Bancroft Library at the University of California; the companionablehospitalityofJuneMenzies.Ihavealsoenjoyed,anddepended on, the help and advice of Laurel Forster, Richard Thompson, Jane Seymour, and Sue Sissling. The enthusiasm of W. Clark Whitehorn at the University of New Mexico Press was a major spur to complete the final draft. I am also grateful to the Press’s readers for their advice, and to Nicole Schlutt for her help with the editing the manuscript. Claims and Speculations is dedicated to Molly Clark and Carl Schwarcz of Sausalito, California. My happiest experiences in writing this book have derived from their hospitality and friendship. xii Figure 1: Kinsey & Kinsey. “Overcome by gas, the recusitation” (1899). University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections, UW12490. ...