Nov 21, 2024 - Sale 2687

Sale 2687 - Lot 53

Price Realized: $ 469
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(CALIFORNIA.) Charles T. Bailey, editor. File of the "American Headlight" amateur newspaper from Siskiyou County. Volume II, no. 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 21, 23; Volume III, no. 1, 11, 13, 16, 17. 12 issues, each 4 pages on a folding sheet, unbound, most 7¾ x 5½ inches with minimal wear, the last 4 issues a bit larger with minor edge wear. Seiad Valley, CA, February 1887 to June 1888
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Additional Details

The production of amateur newspapers and magazines was a popular pastime among adolescents and young adults in the late 19th century, either in manuscript (see lot 53, for example), or on home printing presses. Unlike their modern descendants, the zines, they often imitated mainstream publications in tone, with liberal doses of hyper-local news bites.

This fine example of the genre, the American Headlight, was produced by Charles Theobald Bailey (1868-1892) of Seiad Valley, CA, in Siskiyou County just shy of the Oregon border. Bailey had his writing published in other newspapers as well, graduated from a teacher's institute, and was about to commence his first teaching position when he drowned in a creek near his home (Scott Valley News, 6 August 1892).

We trace only two holdings in OCLC, at the Huntington Library, and the American Antiquarian Society.