Tenting on the Plains, or General Custer in Kansas and Texas, by Elizabeth B. Custer, First Edition, 1887

Custer, Elizabeth B. Tenting on the Plains or General Custer in Kansas and Texas. New York: Charles L. Webster & Company, 1887. First edition. Octavo. Brown cloth boards, embossed with gilt, red, blue, and gray flags, medal of honor, and titles to front, gilt sword and blue and gilt titles to spine. Rebacked, saving spine. Illustrated throughout. With a new archival slipcase. 

Presented is a first edition printing of Tenting on the Plains, or General Custer in Kansas and Texas by Elizabeth B. Custer. It was published in New York by Charles L. Webster & Company, in 1887. It is presented in brown cloth boards, embossed in gilt, red, blue, and gray on the front board, with gilt and blue titles on the spine. It has been rebacked, saving the original spine. The book is decorated with an engraved frontispiece portrait of then Brevet Major General Custer and 28 mid-text illustrations, including two maps. 

After President Ulysses S. Grant publicly blamed General Armstrong Custer for the disaster at Little Bighorn, Elizabeth Custer, the general’s wife, took on the role of his public defender. Beginning with her book, Boots and Saddles, in 1885, she would go on to publish a trilogy of autobiographical works about the life of her martyred husband. In Tenting on the Plains, which has been credited with adding greatly to the Custer legend, Elizabeth Custer described their marriage and experiences from the end of the Civil War and throughout subsequent Indian campaigns to 1867. 

The book starts with a dedication, "To him Whose Brave and Blithe Endurance Made Those Who Followed Him Forget, In His Sunshiny Presence, Half the Hardship and the Danger." It continues with a short “Biographical Sketch of Major-General George A. Custer” and then details those years between 1865 and 1867 over 23 chapters.

CONDITION:

Very good condition. First edition. Octavo. Hardcover brown cloth, decorated with crossed cavalry flags, in gilt, red, blue, and gray as well as a gilt Medal of Honor embossed on the front board, gilt and blue titles and gilt sabre embossed on the spine. Rebacked, saving original spine. Wear to the top and bottom of the spine. Bumping to corners, and wear and light scuffs on front and back board. Original green and white floral endpapers. Clean pages overall, with light toning, scattered foxing marks. G. A. Custer oval engraved frontispiece portrait, engraved by H. B. Halls Sons, New York, with tissue cover. Offset toning on tissue and full title page from portrait. Illustrated throughout, with frontispiece and 29 illustrations and two maps. With a new archival cloth slipcase.