On Hazardous Service: Scouts and Spies of the North and South.

BEYMER, William Gilmore.

$175.00

Item Number: 132540

New York and London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1912.

First edition of Beymer’s collection of ten Civil War stories including three personal narratives. Octavo, original cloth, illustrated by Howard Pyle and others, tissue-guarded frontispiece in color. In near fine condition.

Combining autobiography and history, the memoir was one of the most popular forms of Civil War literature. Generally presented as nonfiction and relating experiences in a first-person voice, the form reached its peak in the 1880s, when hundreds of Civil War memoirs appeared before an insatiable public. Some memoirs, typically those of war heroes, came out immediately as books. Others were published as newspaper or magazine articles, some of which were later collected. The popularity of such Civil War narratives lived on through the twentieth century, attesting to the enduring interest that Americans took in the national conflict.